The National Interest

Sebastien Roblin

Stealth Fighters, Asia

While virtually any plane can be equipped to fire long-range missiles, stealth airframes are built using radar-absorbent materials and engineered precisely to minimize reflection of radar waves.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Ultimately, hit-and-run tactics leaning on BVR and stealth technology may be quite effective in securing air superiority. However, they won’t suffice to overcome constraints of fuel and weapons supply in scenarios that involve distant and more numerous opponents attacking high-value targets.

In Len Deighton’s book Fighter, he describes the tactics used by the outnumbered English fighter pilots defending against German Luftwaffe bombers in the Battle of Britain:

The professional fighter pilot gained height as quickly as he was permitted, and treasured possession of that benefit. He hoped always to spot the enemy before they spotted him and hurried to the sun side of them to keep himself invisible. He needed superior speed, so he positioned himself for a diving attack, and he would choose a victim at the very rear of the enemy formation so that he did not have to fly through their gunfire. He would hope to kill on that first dive. If he failed, the dedicated professional would flee rather than face an alerted enemy.

Deighton’s point was that the best British pilots used hit-and-run tactics emphasizing surprise and speed in order to minimize losses, rather than dogfighting at length with enemies after those advantages were spent. These tactics permitted small numbers of British fighters to tackle the aerial armadas of the German Luftwaffe.

Obviously, technology has changed dramatically since 1940. While contemporary fighters can now go more than five times as fast as the Spitfires and Messerschmitt fighters of the Battle of Britain, two new technologies promise to make hit-and-run tactics more effective: stealth technology and long-range air-to-air missiles.

Stealth and Its Limits: 

While virtually any plane can be equipped to fire long-range missiles, stealth airframes are built using radar-absorbent materials and engineered precisely to minimize reflection of radar waves. This constrains their load-carrying abilities, as external weapons or drop tanks could increase their visibility on radar. The United States fields two stealth fighters, the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning II.

Stealth planes are properly described as “Low Observable” aircraft. They are not actually undetectable, but are very hard to spot on radar. Let’s review the limits on stealth technology, and how fighter doctrine may evolve around them.

Stealth aircraft are optimized to be difficult to observe on the precise X-Band radars used on modern fighters: while some radars have better resolutions than others, most will only be able to track a stealth fighter at shorter distances. An F-22 is claimed to have the radar cross section of 0.0001 square meters in certain aspect—the same as that of a marble.

Low-bandwidth radars are more effective at detecting stealth aircraft. These are typically used by ground installations and ships, but also found on specialized aerial platforms such as the E-2D. However, they come with a major limitation: they can reveal only the general location of a stealth fighter and are too imprecise to be used to target missiles—though they can indicate to an X-Band radar where to look.

Infra-Red Search-and Track (IRST) systems offer another means of detecting stealth aircraft, but their range is generally limited. The latest IRST system on the SU-35 has extended the range up to 50 kilometers, whereas its radar has detection range of up to 200 kilometers. Just like low-band radar, IRST doesn’t give a precise track and can’t be used to lock on weapons. Stealth fighters include features designed to minimize heat signature, but they are far from completely effective.

Of course, a stealth fighter can be seen within visual range, and is vulnerable to heat-seeking missiles.

To recap: stealth technology is more effective at a distance. Although there are a number of methods to detect stealth fighters at long range, they generally don’t permit weapons to lock on to them.

In return, nothing prevents the stealth aircraft from firing at its opponents.

Enter the beyond-visual-range (BVR) missile.

Long Range Air-to-Air Missiles

Around the late 1990s, a new generation of long-range radar-guided air-to-air missiles entered service, notably the AIM-120 AMRAAM and the Russian R-77. These could hit targets over 50 kilometers away. (The earlier AIM-54 Phoenix boasted even longer range but was very expensive). In subsequent decades, the range has continued to increase to well over 100 kilometers, and new types such as the European MBDA Meteor and the Chinese PL-15 continue to push the envelope of speed and range.

The current AIM-120D has a theoretical maximum range of 160 kilometers; although in practice firing range will likely be much shorter for reasons soon discussed.

As long-range missiles are radar-guided, stealth fighters are not particularly vulnerable to them. The same cannot be said for non-stealth aircraft. An F-15 or Su-35 may attempt to avoid missiles with evasive maneuvers and counter measures—but doing so will disrupt whatever they are doing, and an opponent is likely to fire more than one missile.

One factor that is difficult to calculate is how likely long-range missiles are to hit. Extrapolating from past usage of radar-guided missiles is problematic, both because missile technology has advanced considerably since its inception (early radar-guided Sparrow missiles had a less than 10 percent kill probability in the Vietnam War), and the conflicts in which radar-guided missiles have been more successful (Arab-Israeli conflicts, the Gulf War) involved poorly trained opponents lacking effective countermeasures.

It’s safe to say that long-range missiles will have lower hit rates than short-range missiles like the AIM-9 Sidewinder and the Russian R-73—modern versions of which have chalked up a roughly seventy percent probability of kill.

Attrition and High Value Targets

Third- or fourth-generation fighters seeking to engage stealth aircraft in combat must close within short range so that their targeting systems are effective, all while dodging volleys of deadly missiles. As the stealth fighters themselves are difficult to track, they can disengage to avoid entering the short-range envelope in relative security.

It’s a difficult advantage to overcome.

But referring back to the Battle of Britain can reveal a limitation of this strategy. The British hit-and-run attacks succeeded in inflicting deadly attrition on German bombers over time until they were forced to call off the air offensive. But they rarely prevented the German formations from hitting their targets. The German simply had too many aircraft.

At first, this was a problem: the Germans relentlessly pounded British airfields, degrading the Royal Air Force’s ability to fight in the air. But then the Germans switched to bombing civilian targets in London. While this inflicted many civilian casualties, the raids did not degrade the RAF’s ability to fight back. The British fighters could sustain their advantageous rate of attrition versus the German Luftwaffe until the latter was forced to tap out.

So what happens if the other side attacks with superior numbers a target that must be defended?

An F-22 has a combat radius of some five hundred miles on internal fuel. The F-35 can fly 875 miles when loaded for air-to-air combat. Now consider the thousands of kilometers lying between U.S. bases in the Pacific and Europe and various potential conflict zones. To operate over those distances, stealth fighters would require aerial refueling from tanker aircraft. If fighting a well-equipped opponent, carrier-based aircraft would also likely be distant from the warzone, as carriers are at risk if they approach too close to ground-based anti-shipping missile batteries and aircraft.

American fighters would also likely be supported by AWACS airborne radar and command and control platforms, notably the E-2 Hawkeye and E-3 Sentry. The tankers and the AWACS aircraft are basically lumbering airliner-sized planes crammed full of fuel and electronic equipment respectively.

Let’s consider what would happen when American fighters encounter a much larger force of fighters based on the coast. The American fighters could fire their long-range AIM-120D missiles from more than one hundred kilometers away—four from each F-35 and six on the F-22. Soaring at Mach 4—twice the maximum speed of the aircraft that launched it—an AIM-120 can traverse eighty kilometers in one minute.

The radar-warning receivers on their targets would light up as they detect the incoming attack. The further away the target, the more time it has to evade the missile. Therefore, BVR missiles may be fired at well below their maximum range to ensure a higher probability of a kill, particularly when engaging maneuverable fighter aircraft.

Most opposing aircraft would not be able to shoot back at the stealth planes, though they might have a general idea of their position if they are supported by low-band radar or good infrared sensors. They could close on the American fighters, hoping to enter the envelope in which their sensors are effective.

What if the U.S. fighters close to short range after expending their long-range armaments, rather than prudently disengaging? If both sides are closing upon each other at maximum speed at high altitude, the distance between them would diminish at a rate of 60-80 kilometers a minute. Even if the AIM-120s were fired at maximum range, the opposing aircraft could close that distance in one or two minutes.

In short-range engagements, surprise, pilot training and flight performance will determine the victor.

The F-22 is a superb dogfighter. The F-35… not so much, though it has its defenders. Both aircraft can carry two Sidewinder missiles and fire shells from their onboard cannons.

However, their opponents would be able to spot the American fighters as they enter visual range thanks to the Mark One human eyeball, as well as infrared and electro-optical sensors—and even radars, which are effective against stealth aircraft at short ranges. The stealth fighters could be targeted with heat-seeking missiles, more of which could be carried by the non-stealth aircraft. If the opponents retain a significant numerical advantage, than within-visual range combat could be quite risky.

But why would stealth fighters risk engaging in short range in the first place?

Stealth Fighters Don’t Swim

The Rand Corporation’s Pacific Vision wargame simulating a conflict with China in 2008 found that even in a favorable scenario for the United States—half of U.S. missiles hit at long range and the none of their opponent’s do—a force of U.S. fighters outnumbered roughly three to one would be overwhelmed after firing off all its missiles. The less-maneuverable F-35s fared poorly in the ensuing dogfight. But in the end, nearly all of the U.S. fighters were lost.

Why? The hostile aircraft didn’t have trouble detecting the tankers supporting the U.S. forces. Unlike the F-22s and F-35s, tankers have neither the speed nor stealth to evade a determined attack.

A final consideration is that opponents may field limited number of their own stealth fighters, such as the J-20 or the Sukhoi T-50. Even a small number of stealth fighters would be effective at sneaking into the range of the tankers and AWACs aircraft and taking them out before the U.S. aircraft could evade or retaliate. Very long-range missiles such as the R-37 and the PL-13 could also assist in the anti-tanker mission.

The Psychological Factor

There are limitations to the “overwhelm with numbers” strategy.

In ground warfare, consider what would likely happen if an attacking infantry unit were to sustain 33 percent casualties attacking an objective. More often than not, the attackers would halt their advance, if not beat an outright retreat. Not only do fear and stress from incoming fire and casualties cause soldiers to abandon an attack, but disorganization and confusion set in as communication becomes frantic and links in the chain of command are eliminated.

The RAND wargame results hinged on ten surviving pilots shooting down the U.S. tankers after sixty-two of their compatriots were shot down. How coolheaded and rational would these pilots remain while their unit suffered 86 percent casualties?

Air warfare does have different psychological and physical dynamics than ground warfare. There are historical incidents in which aerial units pressed home attacks despite sustaining very heavy casualties, even up to 100 percent. However, there are also instances in which aerial attackers aborted in disorder after taking losses.

Implementing a swarm attack would also be no simple matter. Concentrating large numbers of aircraft would be a logistical challenge. They would also need to attack a target that would force American fighters to engage in such adverse circumstances.

Solutions?

How can U.S. doctrine adapt to this challenging scenario?

Already, many theorists believe that carriers would be forced to remain far away from hostile shores. The survivability of airbases in the event of a mass surface-to-surface missile attack is also open to question. One possibility is that no large-scale air battles would materialize.

The two key limitations are logistical: lack of internal fuel to operate without support, and insufficient missiles to tackle superior numbers. For the time being, there is no obvious fix to the fuel problem: the latest U.S. fighters, the F-22 and F-35, are simply going to depend on tankers. Some suggest that the Navy should deploy light-weight low-observable drones from carriers that could potentially operate further afield.

What about increasing missile capacity?

The U.S. military is a big proponent of networked warfare. In theory, if one airplane detects an enemy, it could pass on that data to friendly ships and aircraft—and through Cooperative Engagement Ability, even potentially allow those friendlies to shoot at that target from far away. One potential tactic is to use a vanguard of stealthy fighters to identify incoming enemy aircraft and send targeting data to ships or non-stealth fighters, which can carry heavier weapons loads. The F-35’s excellent sensors and datalinks could make it effective in this role.

There is even an idea being kicked around to mount large numbers of missiles on a B-1 or B-52, which would be fired off hundreds of kilometers away from the battle. Of course, such an “arsenal plane” would be vulnerable if enemy fighters broke through the accompanying line of F-22s and F-35s. The tactic would likely require even longer-range missiles than the U.S. currently employs.

Ultimately, hit-and-run tactics leaning on BVR and stealth technology may be quite effective in securing air superiority. However, they won’t suffice to overcome constraints of fuel and weapons supply in scenarios that involve distant and more numerous opponents attacking high-value targets.

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 2019.

Image: Wikipedia.

Sebastien Roblin

Korean War, Asia Pacific

As the UN solidified control of the seas surrounding the Sea of Japan, the gun-armed capital ships embarked on an extensive shore bombardment campaign.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The most important naval battle of the war occurred on the opening day of the conflict. South Korea’s only large patrol boat intercepted and destroyed a North Korean vessel on the verge of landing troops in Pusan in an engagement described in a companion article.

Just days after North Korea embarked on its steam-roller invasion of its larger but less heavily armed southern neighbor, the United Nations decided it needed to step in and save the besieged Republic of Korea.

However, it would take time for ground forces and their heavy tanks and artillery to arrive in the South Korean port of Pusan (all the other major ports were swiftly overrun). 

The same was not true of aircraft ships based in U.S.-occupied Japan. While American jet fighters secured air superiority over North Korea’s World War II-vintage air force, it fell to the U.S. and British navies to try to stem the seemingly unstoppable North Korean advance.

The UN ships could affect battles on land in two key ways: by bombarding coastal facilities and enemy troops advancing along the coastline with their large guns, and by seizing control of the sea from North Korea’s People's Navy, which was using its small boats and merchant ships to supply troops along the coast and infiltrate commandos behind South Korean lines. 

The most important naval battle of the war occurred on the opening day of the conflict. South Korea’s only large patrol boat intercepted and destroyed a North Korean vessel on the verge of landing troops in Pusan in an engagement described in a companion article.

On July 2, a more formidable task force assembled on Korea’s eastern coastline, composed of the American light cruiser Juneau, the British cruiser Jamaica and the frigate-sized armed sloop Black Swan.

Both British vessels had seen significant action during World War II. 

The smaller escort 2,000-ton HMS Black Swan had survived mines and attacking Luftwaffe bombers and even helped sink German submarine U-124. A year earlier, she had emerged badly battered but still afloat from a deadly gun duel with Chinese coastal guns on the Yangtze River.

Jamaica’s feats were even more legendary. In 1942, she had charged towards German battlecruisers in the Battle of the Barents Sea, helping drive them away, then helped sink notorious battlecruiser Scharnhorst in the epic Battle of the North Cape.

By contrast, the 6,800-ton USS Juneau had only just been commissioned in 1946, the lead ship in her class anti-aircraft cruisers.

At a quarter past six in the morning of July 2, 1950, lookouts on the three ships spotted four North Korean motor torpedo boats (numbered No.21 through No. 24) and two gunboats (Mo-233 and Mo-234) escorting ten trawlers heading back to their bases in North Korea—having just emptied holds full of ammunition at Chuonmin Chan (also transliterated as Chumunjin).

As the cruisers surged forward to intercept, to their surprise, the motorboats peeled off and came barreling towards them!

The newly founded North Korean Navy had received at least five Soviet G-5 motor torpedo boats. The G-5s only 62 feet long, weighed a mere 18 tons and typically required a crew of six or seven. Their two 850 horsepower GAM-34 V12 engines—derived from an aircraft engine used on heavy bombers and ‘flying aircraft carriers’—could propel the boat to a blazingly fast 61 miles per hour. 

That speed was hoped to give the boats the agility to evade enemy fire and maneuver to a good firing position to release their primary weapons: two 533-millimeter torpedo tubes. While torpedoes could be dodged, they were still greatly feared: combat experience had shown that just one or two lucky torpedo hits could sink even large cruisers and carriers.

As secondary weapons, the motorboats also had 12.7-millimeter machine guns, and some may have been fitted with punchier rapid-firing automatic cannons.

The Soviet Union had built over 300 G-5s between 1934 and 1941 and lost in World War II skirmishes with the German, Finnish and Romanian forces in the Baltic and Black Seas. However, they rarely launched torpedo attacks against large warships, instead battling small minesweepers and minelayers, and serving in auxiliary transport roles. 

The two gunboats were 47-ton wooden-hulled OD-200-class submarine hunters armed with rapid-firing 37-millimeter anti-aircraft cannons, sonars, and depth charges.

The big cruisers began lobbing big shells at their diminutive assailants from over six miles away. The Jamaica disposed of both four triple-6” gun turrets, as well as four faster-firing 4” dual purposes guns. Juneau bristled with six turrets each packing two 5” dual-purpose guns.

In Michael Hickey’s history Korean War, Midshipman Michael Muschamp of the Jamaica remembered the battle thusly:

“A very perturbed 18-year old donned clothes, anti-flash gear, and a tin hat in triple quick time. I made my way to my action station on the bridge…I soon saw what all the fuss was about.

There were six small craft, trapped between UN three warships and the shore, firing what appeared to be 20mm and 40mm cannon at Juneau and Jamaica. The two cruisers got the range of the craft and sank four within ten minutes. Another ran ashore in flames and the sixth escaped seaward.”

By the time the little boats had closed within two miles, torpedo boats No.24 had outright sunk by the powerful shells, and No.22 badly damaged. No.23 grounded itself ashore due to damage and was subsequently destroyed.

Both gunboats were destroyed as well, and two North Korean sailors captured.

By most accounts, the North Korean never launched any torpedoes. According to Muschamp, one of the rescued sailors when asked by an interrogator stated: “Oh, the Russians were going to teach us how to fire them [torpedoes] next week.”

Only boat No.21 escaped the engagement unscathed. Its captain, Kim Kun Ok, apparently reported sinking the American cruiser Baltimore—a victory which remains celebrated with a display (pictured here) in the Victorious War Museum in Pyongyang. This would have been quite a feat, as the Baltimore had been decommissioned four years earlier in 1946, and was at the time held in reserve in Washington state.

Bravado aside, the KPN subsequently decided to avoid directly engaging U.N. warships for the remainder of the conflict. However, it did continue using small boats for resupply and troop infiltration mission—most of which were subsequently sunk that July and August, including the ten KPN trawlers the motorboats had been escorting. 

Later on August 15, South Korean minesweeper YMS 503 intercepted a large North Korean convoy and sank 15 small boats, and captured 30.

As the UN solidified control of the seas surrounding the Sea of Japan, the gun-armed capital ships embarked on an extensive shore bombardment campaign. One tactic employed was to preemptively shell the cliffs overlooking coastal roads to create obstructing debris. The cruisers would then wait quietly at night with their running lights off for a North Korean convoy to arrive and dismount to clear the debris, before opening fire with a surprise salvo.

However, coastal bombardment missions came with their own risks. On July 8, Jamaica was bombarding a shore target when a remarkably well-aimed 3-inch shell fired by a coastal battery smacked into her superstructure, killing five artillerymen that had been manning the guns as well as one sailor. These were the first UK casualties of the Korean War.

The battle of Chumonchin Chan is today considered one of the six surface warfare engagements fought by the U.S. Navy since World War II, but the small size of the North Korean vessels has likely contributed to the engagement’s obscurity. 

Nonetheless, North Korea’s coastal fleet played an important role in the early days of the Korean War in projecting force against its southern neighbor. The vigorous counterattack mounted by ROK and UN naval forces likewise was vital in curtailing that threat—and laid the groundwork for the landing at Inchon that ejected Pyongyang’s troops from South Korea, and ultimately threatened the North in turn with invasion.

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 2019.

Image: Flickr.

Sebastien Roblin

Soviet Navy, World

For all its serious shortcomings, the Alfa was undeniably a striking and ambitious design that pushed the limits of submarine performance in ways few modern designs even attempt.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The Alfa represented a design paradigm for “small but fast” attack submarines that would ultimately fall out of favor compared to “big but stealthy” designs like the Russian Akula-class and U.S. Sea Wolf-class SSNs—though isolated media reports have revealed some interest in future Alfa-like boats.

The Project 705 Lira—better known abroad as the Alfa-class submarine by NATO—was basically a submarine race car, and looked the part with svelte tear-drop shaped hull, rakishly trimmed-down sail designed to minimize aquadynamic drag, and even its convertible-style pop-up windshield.    

Military vehicles are generally designed out of a relentless quest for efficiency, but the Alfa’s iconic shape exemplifies how kinematically optimal designs often possess a striking aesthetic of their own. 

Soviet nuclear-powered attack submarines tended to be faster and deeper-diving than their Western counterparts—though they were also noisier and more prone to horrifying accidents. 

The Project 705, however, originated as a 1958-design concept to push the speed advantage to the maximum, allowing the submarine not only keep pace with but overtake NATO carrier task forces typically cruising at 33 knots—while keeping one-step ahead of enemy torpedoes and out-maneuvering enemy submarines.

This extraordinary performance would be achieved by ruthlessly maximizing speed and subtracting from weight. Thus the Alfa featured a relatively small hull made of titanium alloy. Titanium is a rare metal which can create surfaces as strong as steel for roughly half the weight. It is also paramagnetic, making the submarine’s hull more difficult to detect for maritime patrol planes using Magnetic Anomaly Detectors.

However, titanium can only be welded in an inert argon or helium atmosphere. This led U.S. engineers to assume it was simply impractical to weld large pieces of titanium on the scale necessary for a submarine hull. They underestimated Soviet determination: workers in pressurized suits would work in huge warehouses flooded with argon gas to assemble sheets of the shiny, rare metal.

The resulting Project 705 submarine measured 81-meters long but weighed only 3,200-tons submerged. For comparison, the 84-meter-long American Permit class submarine displaced 4,800 tons submerged. 

The Alfa featured a typical Soviet double-hull configuration, but only one of its six internal compartments was intended for habitation by the crew. Extraordinary degrees of automation allowed a complement of 15 officers cooped together in the heavily protected third compartment of the vessel, instead of the roughly 100 personnel typical on contemporary SSNs. 

In fact, only eight crew could operate virtually every system on the submarine from the command center thanks to its highly automated systems, allowing for very fast reaction times in combat. In the event of misfortune, the crew could make use of a spherical escape capsule built into the sail—the first to be found on a Soviet submarine.

The Alfa’s complement would later be doubled to 32 crew—but no enlisted ratings were invited onboard. 

However, as the U.S. Navy discovered decades later while developing the Littoral Combat Ship, this degree of automation meant the small crew was incapable of performing maintenance and repairs while at sea.

The Alfa relied upon reactor consuming 90% enriched uranium-235 fuel, and liquified lead-bismuth-eutectic for cooling to produce 155 MW of power. As the liquified metal would solidify at temperatures below 257 degrees Fahrenheit, the reactors typically had remain warm lest the liquefied metal freeze, rendering the reactor non-functional. 

Each Project 705 carried eighteen to twenty 533-millimeter torpedoes which could be automatically loaded into six tubes which could pneumatically ‘pop’ the weapons upwards to engage ships overhead. Optionally, RPK-2 “Starfish” nuclear anti-submarine missiles and ultra-fasted Shkval super-cavitating torpedoes could also be carried. Alfa variants armed with ballistic missiles (705A) or gigantic 650-millimeter torpedo tubes (the 705D) were conceived but never built.

After spending nine years in development, four Alfas were laid down in Severodvinsk and Lenningrad between 1967 and 1969. However, only one—K-64 Leningrad, had been launched and commissioned by the beginning of 1972. That same year, K-64 experienced both cracking in its titanium hull and a leaking liquified metal ‘froze’ on the exterior of the reactor causing irreparable damage. The super-submarine was decommissioned and scrapped just a few years after going on duty.

After several years of tweaking, six more Alfas were finally commissioned between 1977-1981, with later 705K boats using a moderately more reliable BM-40A reactors.

Undeniably, the Project 705 exhibited impressive performance. In a minute and a half, an Alfa could accelerate up to 41 knots (47 miles per hour) while submerged—though some sources claim eve higher speeds were achieved. Their high degree of reserve buoyancy also made them capable of executing fast turns and changes in attitude, and they could dive—and attack from!—depths that NATO torpedoes struggled to atain.

When racing at maximum speed using its steam-turbined turned five-bladed propeller, the Alfa-class was unsurprisingly noisy. But an Alfa commander in need of discretion had another trick he could pull from his sleeve: a secondary propulsion system in the form of two tiny electrically turned propellers that allowed the Alfa to slink around very quietly at low speeds.

The CIA initially mis-identified the Alfas as being diesel-electric submarines due to their small size. But two determined CIA case officers, Herb Lord and Gerhardt Thamm, began closely analyzing photo intelligence and reports on titanium components flowing to mysterious facilities in shipyards in Leningrad and Severodvinsk, as described by Thamm in this article. This led to a more accurate estimate the capabilities of the ‘titanium submarines’ by 1979, prompting the development of more agile Mark 48 ADCAP and Spearfish torpedoes by the U.S. and U.K. respectively. 

However, the Pentagon appears to have been fooled by misinformation suggesting much larger-scale production of the Alfa than was the case. In fact, the Alfa had big problems to match its extraordinary speed.

As the special facilities required to keep the liquid metal reactors were often missing or broken-down, Alfa crews resorted to keeping the reactors running full time even while in port, making the reactors very difficult to maintain and unreliable. And the Alfas’ hot-burning reactors had to be replaced entirely after fifteen years in service. 

The Alfa’s low reliability and maintainability at sea meant the submarine was conceived of as a sort of “interceptor,” kept ready at port to dash after key surface warships targets. In this role the Alfa amounted to a formidable foe to NATO submariners.

But all but one of the Alfas had been decommissioned by 1990, four of them having had their reactor coolant freeze while deployed at sea. The last ship, K-123, was refit with a pressurized water reactor and was finally decommissioned from duties as a training ship in 1996.

Safe disposal of the Alfa reactor cores encrusted with solidified lead-bismuth also proved quite challenging. Furthermore, over 650 tons of weapons-grade U-235 fuel used by Alfas was found unsecured in warehouses in Kazakhstan in 1994, where they had attracted interest from illegal arms dealers. The uranium was ultimately extracted to the United States using huge C-5 Galaxy cargo planes in a covert operation known as Project Sapphire.

The Alfa represented a design paradigm for “small but fast” attack submarines that would ultimately fall out of favor compared to “big but stealthy” designs like the Russian Akula-class and U.S. Sea Wolf-class SSNs—though isolated media reports have revealed some interest in future Alfa-like boats. Yet stealth, not speed, reigns as king in modern submarine warfare tactics.

That said, for all its serious shortcomings, the Alfa was undeniably a striking and ambitious design that pushed the limits of submarine performance in ways few modern designs even attempt.

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 in 2019 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Ethen Kim Lieser

Social Security,

If both members of a married couple qualify for Social Security benefits, it is best to think about when each should file.

When many older Americans get closer to retirement, they often cram in as much information regarding Social Security benefits as possible.

Along the way, there invariably will be missing pieces of information that will prevent one from taking full advantage of the monthly checks and claiming all of the money that they’re entitled to.

For many experts, the most prudent financial decision is generally very simple: wait on filing for the benefits as long as possible—preferably till age seventy.

“Workers planning for their retirement should be aware that retirement benefits depend on age at retirement. If a worker begins receiving benefits before his/her normal (or full) retirement age, the worker will receive a reduced benefit,” the Social Security Administration (SSA) says.

“A worker can choose to retire as early as age sixty-two, but doing so may result in a reduction of as much as thirty percent,” it continues.

But what about married folks out there? Do they need to do anything special? Yes, there are indeed some proper steps an individual needs to take to max out those monthly benefits—and that final total might even be larger than what one anticipated.

Spousal Benefits

According to a finance expert on the Motley Fool, “spousal benefits are generally available to those who are married to someone receiving Social Security checks. They’re particularly helpful for those who either aren’t eligible for their own benefits or are receiving very little from Social Security.”

The maximum amount that an individual can receive via spousal benefits is half of the higher-earning spouse's benefit amount at their full retirement age (FRA). But if the widow or widower qualifies for Social Security on their own record and the monthly payments are higher, they have the option to switch to their own benefit at any time between ages sixty-two and seventy. There is also a “one-time lump-sum death payment of $255 (that) can be paid to the surviving spouse if he or she was living with the deceased; or, if living apart, was receiving certain Social Security benefits on the deceased’s record,” the SSA says.

Claiming Strategy

If both members of a married couple qualify for Social Security benefits, it is best to think about when each should file.

“You can begin collecting benefits at sixty-two years old or any age thereafter, but the age you file will directly affect the size of your monthly payments,” the expert writes. “The only way to receive the entire benefit amount you’re entitled to is to claim at your FRA—which is either age sixty-six, sixty-seven, or somewhere in between depending on the year you were born.”

When One Passes

It is also important to weigh options in the event a spouse passes away, as that decision could dictate how much one receives in benefits in the years ahead. 

The expert notes that “by being strategic about when you both claim benefits, you can make the most of survivors benefits.”

“For example, if the higher-earning spouse is significantly older, it may make sense for that person to delay benefits. If he or she does pass away first, then, the surviving spouse will earn larger checks than if the deceased spouse claimed earlier,” she adds.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-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

Ethen Kim Lieser

Coronavirus,

Can a third shot give full protection from the Delta variant?

The timeline for Americans to get their coronavirus booster shots might be sped up by three months.

Last week, Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, noted that data out of Israel were showing a reduction in the effectiveness of Pfizer’s vaccine against severe illness among those sixty-five and older who were fully vaccinated in January or February.

The data further revealed that booster doses provide four times as much protection against infection from the highly transmissible Delta variant, which was first detected by scientists in India last fall, Reuters reported.

In response, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki contended that President Joe Biden would fully rely on officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) if there is any need to adjust the previously planned rollout of booster shots at eight months after receiving two coronavirus vaccine doses.

“So, I want to be very clear on that. If they were to change their guidance based on data for any particular group, he would, of course, abide by that,” Psaki said during a press briefing.

“But for people watching at home, for you all who are reporting out this nothing has changed about the eight-month timeline as it relates to the boosters,” she added.

Limited Data

On Monday, a new CDC presentation has asserted that the data needed to properly evaluate booster shots for the general population has been found to be limited, which might suggest that the agency’s panel could limit its initial endorsement of booster shots to highly vulnerable groups and healthcare employees.

According to the presentation, vaccine efficacy for the Delta variant has ranged between thirty-nine percent and eighty-four percent. It is “important to monitor trends of effectiveness by severity of disease over time,” the presentation noted, adding that inoculating the unvaccinated must continue to be a “top priority.”

The latest estimates indicate that just over fifty percent of Americans are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. While inoculations have been increasing in recent weeks, millions are still firmly opposed to getting vaccinated.

Three and Done?

Last week, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in an interview on CBS’ This Morning that there is a possibility that Americans may not need annual booster shots after a third jab.

“This virus has been humbling, so I don’t want to say never, but we are not necessarily anticipating that you will need this annually,” she said. “It does look like after this third dose, you get a really robust response, and so we will continue to follow the science both on the vaccine side but also on the virus side.”

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-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

James Holmes

Future Warfare, Asia

Sci-fi suggests, in a roundabout way, that personnel policy may constitute a U.S. Navy center of gravity.

Here's What You Need To Remember: Fling a variety of challenges at personnel, along as many axes as you can, as simultaneously as you can. Give each crewman more to do than he can, on the Cylon-esque reasoning that imposing numerous, repeated contingencies compounds the demands on people and hardware. Such tactics constitute the precursor to a crushing blow—or to an American withdrawal under duress.

How would you punk the U.S. Navy if the lords of naval warfare handed you the keys to, say, China’s navy? Well, you might do the obvious thing: read or watch some science fiction!

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

In the latest Star Trek flick, for instance, a new foe harnesses swarm tactics to eviscerate the starship Enterprise. A coordinated stream of small craft overpowers the starship’s defenses through the simple expedient of presenting more targets than the Enterprise crew can shoot down. Its overseer then concentrates fire at vital nodes to dismember the ship’s structure.

Such tactics are an otherworldly counterpart to saturation missile barrages meant to overwhelm U.S. surface combatants’ Aegis combat systems. Rather than try to evade Aegis defenses, attackers simply aim more rounds at this combination radar, fire-control and surface-to-air missile system than it can handle. Some get through—and sow havoc. Life imitates sci-fi.

And then there’s Battlestar Galactica, a TV show with a similar ripped-from-the-headlines feel. The conceit behind the show: rather than risk a slugfest against the human colonies’ fleet of capital ships and their Viper fighter squadrons, the archenemy Cylons insinuate a computer virus into the fleet. The virus spreads through the ubiquitous computer networks whereby commanders coordinate their endeavors. It disables heavy ships and fighter spacecraft alike, leaving the fleet easy prey.

Sound strategy, that. Why duel a stronger antagonist and risk losing when cyberwarfare can nullify combat power before shots are fired? Galactica, an aged man-of-war, rides out the onslaught because her old-school commander, William Adama, refuses to permit the computers on board to be networked. When modern Vipers—the F-35s of this faraway universe—shut down, the battlestar’s deck crew salvages obsolescent fighters. Old tech proves too low-tech for viruses to infect—yet still lethal enough for skilled aviators to repulse attack.

“Network-centric warfare” remains U.S. forces’ warfighting method of choice, even though the phrase has fallen out of fashion. It comes with grave perils. Live by the computer network, die by the computer network.

But Battlestar Galactica also hints at subtler ways to outfight a stronger opponent. The weak need not vanquish the strong outright. They can harry the strong—enfeebling them until their margin of supremacy vanishes.

Wise combatants, then, study their foes, discern their strengths and frailties, and design operations to tame the former while exploiting the latter. A prospective enemy like China would try to divine the American “center of gravity” or, as Carl von Clausewitz describes it somewhat mystically, the “hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends.” Should a fight erupt, Chinese forces would then aim “blow after blow” at that center of gravity—pounding away until U.S. forces capitulated or, more likely, lost heart and went away.

There’s a curious thing about centers of gravity, though. They can be innocuous. Petroleum refineries turned out to be a center of gravity for Hitler’s war machine, humble freighters and tankers for Tojo’s. By pummeling industry and merchantmen from sky and sea, the Allies starved Axis forces of irreplaceable war materiel.

A related idea from Prussia’s master of strategy: Clausewitz advises strategists that, in the folksy terms I like to employ in Newport, the enemy is not a potted plant. In strategy, in other words, one antagonist doesn’t work its will on a lifeless mass that’s unable to strike a counterblow. Rather, warfare involves an intensely interactive “collision of two living forces”—both imbued with ingenuity and with zeal for their causes. It’s the Golden Rule of combat: the foe does unto you even as you do unto him.

But here’s the thing. It may be possible, through dexterous strategy and operations, to transform a foe into a potted plant—dulling his reactions and material capacity until he’s little more than an inert mass with little prospect of protecting himself or thwarting your will. Better yet, such operations could yield an opponent prone to self-defeating mistakes. Inert pugilists make easy pickings.

By the Golden Rule, moreover, he may do things to reduce you to a potted plant, hampering your ability to adapt to change to the tactical surroundings—change he himself may have wrought. If he renders you inert, you can no longer compete effectively or efficiently. He imposes his will on you—and wins.

Which brings us back to the sci-fi universe. In the very second episode of Battlestar Galactica, titled “33,” the Cylons hit upon an ingenious stratagem: weary Galactica’s and the colonial fleet’s defenders through small-scale but frequent assaults, then strike a fatal blow against a foe too tired, addle-brained and mistake-prone to fight back effectively.

Clausewitz would instantly recognize the approach. He notes that the components of combat strength are force—material capability—and resolve. Quite so. The Cylon onslaught targets both the hardware and human dimensions, enervating the colonial fleet over time. The Cylons smuggle a homing device onto a transport to track its movements, then repeatedly “jump” in faster-than-light strike forces to menace the fleet. Cylon fighters appear every thirty-three minutes. It becomes plain to Galactica’s leadership that the attacks’ purpose is less to inflict damage than to compel the fleet to keep jumping. Relentless assault prevents repairs and upkeep to fighting ships while keeping crews awake.

The campaign takes its toll on hardware and bodies, debilitating the fleet’s fighting power. Think about scrambling an air wing for action every half-hour: you assemble pilots for a preflight briefing, launch, do battle, and recover through “combat landings” that require pilots to slam fuselages on the ship’s flight deck to get the squadron aboard fast. Little maintenance gets done under such circumstances. Machinery needs downtime, and it dislikes transients. Repeatedly starting and stopping it is stressful—even leaving aside the rigors of deep-space combat.

Nor do the equipment’s operators fare much better. “We’re getting slower,” observes Commander Adama grimly after fatigue cascades into computer problems that in turn delay a faster-than-light jump out of harm’s way. The mistake almost subjects not just the battlestar but its consorts—mostly unarmed transports—to Cylon missile fire. Laments the weapons scientist and turncoat Gaius Baltar, “there are limits” beyond which human physiology can’t be pushed. It’s just a matter of time, observes Baltar, before the fleet’s defenders commit a fatal blunder.

And that’s the impact of wearisome tactics on a ship of war that appears amply stocked with manpower. Throughout most of its history, the U.S. Navy manned its ships under a similar philosophy, reasoning that it takes a surplus of manpower to fight a ship in combat. Combat means losses. Now imagine Cylon pinprick attacks’ impact on Galactica and her coterie were it “minimally manned”—that is, if every crewman were assigned multiple jobs, and if the vessels lacked any manpower reserve when (not if) battle damage and casualties occur.

In all likelihood, colonial commanders would have committed a final mistake sooner rather than later, as demands on crews mounted to unbearable proportions. Humanity’s end would have come with it.

This foray into sci-fi represents a roundabout way of proposing that personnel policy may constitute a U.S. Navy center of gravity. Late-model surface vessels—ranging from diminutive littoral combat ships to hulking Zumwalt-class destroyers and Ford-class aircraft carriers—are indeed minimally manned. The logic behind this approach is simple: U.S. defense budgets are stagnant, sailors are expensive. Ergo, substitute technology for people to save taxpayer dollars. The navy doesn’t have to pay, say, an automated firefighting or ammunition-loading system a salary or pension, or fund its health care. The leaner the crew, the greater the savings.

Now, minimal manning may make sense for routine peacetime steaming. Transiting from point A to point B on the nautical chart represents a steady-state environment, entailing predictable demands and few extra stresses to wear down crews. It’s worth noting, though, that every crewman shoulders lots of different duties for different situations—even during everyday operations. That’s true even of ships manned under the traditional, more generous personnel policy. The same sailor might help launch or recover aircraft, take on fuel or supplies from a logistics vessel, fight fires or flooding, and on and on, depending on what the ship’s doing at the time.

Capping the number of crewmen caps the supply of labor. That means automation must reduce the demand for labor enough to keep supply in sync with demand. Can it? Color me skeptical. It’s an open question whether enough shipboard tasks can be automated, wholly or partially, to sustain that balance. I served in a warship operated by half the manpower that operated it in its first life, during World War II. You can indeed reduce manpower by replacing sailors with gee-whiz technology—to a point. It worked for us, but there were times when the makers of Galactica could have cast our crew as characters in “33.” We were the walking dead.

But if minimal manning may suffice for peacetime operations, when no enemy is trying to turn American shortcomings to advantage, what about combat—an environment without a manageable, predictable rhythm? War unfolds not by peacetime cost-benefit logic but by its own paradoxical logic, the logic of unforeseen reversals of fortune. It’s a helter-skelter realm that comes complete with antagonists bent on enfeebling and defeating warriors and materiel.

“Redundancy” is the traditional antidote for battle damage and other emergencies. It imparts resiliency to a combat unit. In hardware terms, redundancy means furnishing a spare of everything you can—shipwrights installing duplicate machinery so that a vessel has an extra generator, pump, piping system, whatever. Lose one widget, and you put a duplicate in service. Excess capacity thus lets crews reroute around damage. It lets a unit sustain its fighting strength despite absorbing a pounding. Spare manpower serves the same purpose. It provides skippers replacements for those who fall in action. Individuals may be incapacitated; the ship as a whole fights on.

If you’re China and confront an antagonist that opts to do without redundancy, you can deploy a troublemaking strategy. You whittle away at the center of gravity manifest in minimal manning. The object of such a strategy? Tire and bewilder crews that may already be overworked. Fling a variety of challenges at them, along as many axes as you can, as simultaneously as you can. Give each crewman more to do than he can, on the Cylon-esque reasoning that imposing numerous, repeated contingencies compounds the demands on people and hardware. Such tactics constitute the precursor to a crushing blow—or to an American withdrawal under duress.

China’s navy, in short, could ape the Cylons’ strategy. In purely martial terms, posing missile, gun, and torpedo threats from many points of the compass from as many domains as possible—from the surface, the depths, and aloft—would compel a ship’s beleaguered defenders to cope with more challenges, perhaps, than they could manage. Flooding an embattled zone with China Coast Guard vessels, fishing craft, and purportedly civilian sea and air traffic—interspersing combat units among nonmilitary ships and planes—would further complicate U.S. commanders’ picture of the surroundings. It would be hard to act for fear of hitting the wrong target—and having pictures of an errant shot splashed across TV and computer screens around the world.

That’s a fate few captains relish. And Chinese commanders would doubtless deploy deceptive measures to make the campaign even more wearisome. To glimpse the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) mindset toward deception, dust off that old copy of Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Among other things, Book I of the Chinese masterwork instructs generals to “feign disorder,” “feign incapacity,” sow confusion among the enemy leadership, divide an enemy host and fall on the weaker fractions, and generally deploy “normal” and “extraordinary” forces in mercurial combinations to confound and weaken opponents. Such ideas find their way into contemporary works on PLA strategy.

Do all that, and a weaker but resolute China stands some chance of overcoming its brawnier foe. It could land a heavy hit or, failing that, simply outlast the foe. How to respond? First and foremost, the U.S. Navy should acknowledge—should grok, as sci-fi master Robert Heinlein might say—that a manpower deficit represents a grave weakness in a hot war. Taking the problem seriously constitutes the first step toward a solution.

Second, it should conscript some imaginative tacticians to play the “red team,” projecting how PLA forces might harness troublemaking strategies. Realistic wargames illuminate the contours of problems while hinting at workarounds.

Third, there may be no substitute for stationing sailors aboard American surface combatants in greater numbers. The service leadership already expanded the crew of littoral combat ships by 25 percent. That’s a welcome boost in percentage terms, but a 25 percent boost equates to just ten more seafarers. Exercises will show how many more mariners are needed, and what skills they should boast to bolster these vessels’ resiliency.

And lastly, the nation is poised to undergo a change of presidential administrations that will usher in a president inclined to bulk up the U.S. Navy, along with a secretary of the navy reportedly inclined to agree. The next few months, then, represent the ideal time for the navy leadership to put the case for new policies—including less minimal manning—before a political leadership favorably disposed toward such policies.

Let’s hand them a sci-fi tract while we’re at it. Therein lies wisdom.

James Holmes is professor of strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific (second edition forthcoming 2018). The views voiced here are his alone. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

This article is being republished due to readers' interests.

Image: Reuters

Peter Suciu

Gun Control,

There is no denying that there has been a rise in the home-made guns showing up on San Francisco's streets—and according to reports, police had seized 164 of the so-called "ghost guns" in 2020, a 2,600 percent increase from the six confiscated in 2016.

High Bridge Arms, which closed in the fall of 2015, was the last gun shop to operate in San Francisco. Its closure was part of what supporters of the Second Amendment said was an effort to make the City by the Bay a "gun-free zone," and now nearly six years later San Francisco's chief prosecutor is looking to take it even further.

This month District Attorney Chesa Boudin announced the city is suing three California companies that make and distribute so-called "Ghost Guns," maintaining that the DIY firearms have been responsible for nearly half of the firearms recovered in gun-related killings in the city last year.

The suit names Blackhawk Manufacturing Group, GS Performance, and MDX Corp. – none of which are based in San Francisco, but are responsible for producing a large number of the firearms found in the city and across California, Boudin said during a news conference, as reported by the Associated Press.

"Guns are flooding our streets. Enough is enough," Boudin said. "It is not enough to wait until after someone has been shot and killed by a firearm. We must get to the root of the problem."

Defection for a Bigger Problem

Boudin's lawsuits were filed as he has faced criticism for his response to rising crime rates in San Francisco, and has cast blame on the guns—not criminals—for the city's woes.

"They are three separate manufacturers that are flooding our streets with illegal firearms, with firearms that we know are being used to harm, to maim, and to kill," added Boudin. "They're harming our communities. They're taking innocent lives. They're putting law enforcement officers at risk. And it's an epidemic that we know is disproportionately impacting communities of color."

The District Attourney (DA) has also called in support from gun control groups, most notably the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, to sue the three firearms manufacturers.

"They've made it possible for anyone in the state to buy all the parts needed to build an untraceable firearm, no questions asked, and get it shipped in a convenient package with tools and instructions, like a piece of IKEA furniture," Giffords Center lawyer Hannah Shearer told the California Globe.

The lawsuit calls for the companies to be barred from shipping their products in the Golden State, while it also seeks monetary penalties. 

Rising Problem?

There is no denying that there has been a rise in the home-made guns showing up on San Francisco's streets—and according to reports, police had seized 164 of the so-called "ghost guns" in 2020, a 2,600 percent increase from the six confiscated in 2016.

Boudin has also noted that sixty-five percent of all ghost guns seized by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) were in California—but it is unclear if all of those firearms were actually used in a crime.

The three companies named in the suit have said they are in full compliance with state and federal law. Moreover, the California Globe also reported that many anti-crime advocates have claimed that Boudin is simply trying to deflect blame with the lawsuit.

"You know who San Franciscans blame for the rise in crime? Boudin," neighborhood crime watch coordinator Theresa Ali told the Globe earlier this month.

"Everyone tries to paint San Francisco as just being all for these left causes, but it isn't always the case," added Ali. "I've marched with Black Lives Matter and protested against Trump. I thought he was a fascist. So it should be telling that a lot of people like me are not blaming these gun makers who are following the rules. We're against Boudin. A lot of us are against Boudin."

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

Image: Reuters

James Holmes

US Navy, World

Navies that skimp on the basics in peacetime seldom triumph in wartime.

Here's What You Need to Remember: If the U.S. Navy projects a slovenly appearance while, say, China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy shows up in a foreign harbor looking spick-and-span, guess who seems like the trustworthy friend and fearsome foe? Advantage: China. Diplomatic influence goes to mariners mindful of the fundamentals.

The U.S. Navy has a diplomatic problem. It’s a problem that stems from the most mundane of failings: neglect of vessels’ outward appearance. The amphibious assault ships USS Boxer and Fort McHenry put into the seaport of Kiel, Germany not long ago in a disreputable state. Rust streaked their sides for all to see. The destroyer USS Gravely, one of America’s frontline Aegis surface combatants, operated alongside allied ships in a likewise parlous condition.

U.S. Marines have a slogan: no better friend, no worse enemy. Slovenly appearances imply to influential audiences that the U.S. Navy is neither a friend worth courting nor a foe worth fearing. After all, navies that skimp on the basics in peacetime seldom triumph in wartime.

How much effort should go into keeping up appearances is a running debate for seafarers everywhere. Sailors hate scraping and painting. It feels like drudgery visited on them by officers bent on currying favor with higher-ups who visit the ship. Cynics suspect their superiors of trying to win promotions, plum job assignments, or medals from visitors favorably impressed by the look of the command. They mutter darkly, channeling Murphy’s Laws of Combat, that no combat-ready unit has ever passed a peacetime inspection.

Such wisecracks betray a conviction that there’s a zero-sum contest between keeping a vessel looking sharp and practicing seamanship, tactics, and kindred technical endeavors that are crucial to routine operations and battle effectiveness. In other words, every minute spent burnishing appearances is a minute not spent on what truly matters.

And for sure, it is possible to take the pursuit of spit-and-polish to excess. Just about any virtue degenerates into vice beyond a certain threshold. Bear in mind, though, that it is human nature to rally to a likely winner while spurning a likely loser. How do people distinguish between the two in peacetime? Combat is the arbiter between superiority and inferiority, yet no missiles or gunfire fly around in peacetime—supplying unequivocal proof of who outmatches whom.

That leaves appearances. Naval forces strive to impress audiences domestic and foreign, friendly, hostile, or indifferent. These observers have few indicators apart from a ship’s appearance to judge its crew’s seamanship, technical acumen, and battle proficiency. So scraping and painting is about more than routine upkeep, or maintenance budgets. The look of a ship has strategic if not political import. It is critical to the war of perceptions.

But outward appearances matter even more than it might seem. While holding forth on the dynamics of peacetime naval diplomacy, strategist Edward Luttwak maintains that whoever most observers believe would have prevailed in a wartime trial of arms tends to prevail in a peacetime showdown. Naval practitioners could render an informed judgment about each contender’s prospects in action. Spit-and-polish might be a secondary concern for them.

Most beholders, however, are not specialists in naval affairs. Yet their opinions count all the same. A tidy, rust-free appearance suggests to landlubbers that the crew knows and cares about its business. If a warship looks like a rusty old hulk, contrariwise, it’s reasonable for onlookers to conjecture that its internals—its propulsion plant, sensors, and armament—may likewise be objects of neglect. Its image for professionalism and battle competence suffers.

If the U.S. Navy projects a slovenly appearance while, say, China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy shows up in a foreign harbor looking spick-and-span, guess who seems like the trustworthy friend and fearsome foe? Advantage: China. Diplomatic influence goes to mariners mindful of the fundamentals.

Nor, it bears saying, are the great unwashed altogether wrong to judge a fleet by its look. Corrosion is an antagonist that can be managed and subdued but never finally defeated. Journalist Jonathan Waldman reviews engineers’ perennial struggle against it in his book Rust, aptly subtitling it The Longest War. It nearly brought down the Statue of Liberty during the 1980s. Manufacturers make extravagant efforts to tame it when, say, canning soda. And it afflicts ships ceaselessly. After all, a hull is a ferrous metallic box floating in seawater. Put iron in contact with saltwater and corrosion soon follows unless sailors stay constantly on the attack.

One imagines Bradley Fiske would nod knowingly at the U.S. Navy’s diplomatic plight. A century ago Admiral Fiske wrote a treatise portraying The Navy as a Fighting Machine. Any piece of hardware, from a humble water pump or electrical generator to a stately fighting ship, has certain maximum performance characteristics. However, it may underperform its design parameters because of the human factor. “When thinking or speaking of the power of any instrument,” he writes, “we mean the power of which it is capable; that is, the result which it can produce, if used with 100 per cent of skill.”

Yet few human beings achieve perfection. Deficits in operator training or experience handicap equipment performance. Technicians may be overworked or apathetic. In any of these cases, materiel will produce only a fraction of its design output. Human frailty degrades combat excellence.

Luttwak notes that weapon systems are “black boxes” to outsiders until used in action. With scant direct evidence of which naval force boasts the best black boxes—with no verdict of arms that yields a definite result—friends and allies, prospective antagonists, and domestic constituents will render a verdict based on the evidence of their eyes. Rust and slipshod housekeeping are telltale indicators that something deeper is amiss.

The balance of appearances, then, could favor even a lesser but spiffy-looking competitor. So let’s get the U.S. Navy fleet looking shipshape again—and restore our standing in the eyes of friend, foe, and bystander alike. The mundane is important.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and author of the forthcoming Brief Guide to Maritime Strategy. The views voiced here are his alone.

This article first appeaered in 2019 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Sebastien Roblin

Vietnam War, Asia

Only six of the eighteen CIA and Air Force personnel manning the remote outpost escaped with their lives in an incident that would remain veiled in secrecy for three decades.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Preserving the memory of shadowy episodes like the battle of Lima 85 may not heal the wounds of the past, but it can help bring about an honest reckoning of the mistakes that were made and inspire reflection as to how to avoid repeating them in the future.

Fifty years ago on March 12, 1968, a top-secret U.S. base on a mountain top in Laos was overrun by an elite force of Vietnamese commandos. Only six of the eighteen CIA and Air Force personnel manning the remote outpost escaped with their lives in an incident that would remain veiled in secrecy for three decades.

This was because the U.S. military was legally prohibited from operating in Laos. The southeast Asian nation had been wracked by a civil war pitting right-wing royalists against Pathet Lao communists—the latter backed by North Vietnam, which used Laotian territory to clandestinely funnel troops into South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh trail. However, in 1962 Washington, Hanoi and Laotian factions all signed a peace treaty in which the foreign powers agreed to withdraw their forces from the country.

However, North Vietnam only withdrew a minority of its forces, and the United States continued transferring extensive military aid to the royalist and instead began a secret but large-scale aerial bombing campaign in the kingdom known as Operation Barrel Roll. Though warplanes based in Vietnam and Thailand flew missions into Laos, CIA-run mercenary contractors and ‘airlines’ such as Air America flew transport and observation aircraft from Laotian bases.

CIA personnel also recruited local Hmong, an ethnic minority present in several southeast Asian states, to fight a guerilla war against the Pathet Lao. It was with this purpose in mind that CIA personnel first established a base atop the steep cliff of Phou Pha Thi mountain, a sacred place in the Hmong’s animist faith which happened to be strategically located near the border with North Vietnam.

This base was one of many ‘Lima Sites’ in Laos intended to facilitate aerial supply of U.S.-allied forces. The main facility was at the peak of the 5,600-foot high mountain surrounded by steep cliffs; you can see the base’s layout in this photo. A path wound downslope to a short 700-meter long airstrip at the base of the mountain was used for resupply and staff rotations, delivered in covert weekly flights by CH-3 helicopters of the 20th U.S. Air Force helicopter squadron.

In the summer of 1966, the U.S. Air Force decided to adapt the base with a new purpose—to serve as radar-navigation system, a or TACAN, by installing a power generator and first a transponder. In the era predating GPS, TACAN sites helped warplanes find their targets, especially, while flying under low visibility conditions or at night. (The first radio navigation system, known as Knickebein, was developed by Nazi Germany, to enable more precise night bombing of England.) In 1967, this was further upgraded to a TSQ-81 antenna and remote bombing system that allowed the base to remotely control U.S. bombers.

Hanoi was only 135 miles northeast of Lima 85, so the clandestine base was able to direct very precise coordinates for U.S. aircraft bombarding the North Vietnamese capital. Because those strikes could involve anything from F-105 fighter bombers to dozens of huge B-52 bombers, this made the base a deadly force multiplier. In just six months, Lima 85 directed between 25 and 55 percent of the air strikes pounding North Vietnamese and Laotian targets.

Because Laotian Prince Souvanna refused to accept U.S. military personnel in Laos, U.S. Air Force personnel deployed to Lima 85 had to sign papers temporarily discharging them from the U.S. military before deploying to Lima, a farcical process known as ‘sheep dipping.’ These technicians were supposed to go unarmed, though they did eventually end up acquiring a handful of small arms. Instead, the base’s security was supposed to be assured by a battalion each of Hmong militia—advised by CIA agents—and Thai Border Patrol policemen deployed around the base of the mountain.

However, Lima 85 may have been concealed from the U.S. public, but it’s presence and purpose were not a secret to the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese Army (NVA). Scouts probed the base’s defenses in December 1967, and on January 12, 1968 a flight of four An-2 biplane transports attacked Lima 85 using underwing 57mm rockets, and 120mm mortar shells dropped out the side doors, killing four Hmong. An Air America UH-1 helicopter was scrambled to intercept the slow transports shot down one of the transports using AK-47 fired out the side—one of very few helicopter-on-airplane kills on record. Another An-2 crashed, either due to ground fire or a failed evasive maneuver.

The base was subsequently hit by a mortar barrage on January 30, then on February 18 Hmong militia ambushed and killed a team of NVA artillery observers near the mountain and recovered plans for a coordinated bombardment of the facility. American military leaders knew the isolated base was surrounded by stronger enemy forces and likely to come under attack, but the base’s TACAN support was considered so valuable that Amb. William Sullivan resisted evacuating the site. Unable to deploy significant defenses, the base’s technicians instead began dispatching hundreds of airstrikes against nearby communist forces to secure their position.

Elite North Vietnamese commandos from the 41st Special Forces battalion had already scaled the seemingly impassible cliffs on Phou Pha Thi’s northside without being detected on January 22 and reconnoitered the most feasible infiltration routes. Early that March, a thirty-three man platoon under the command of Lt. Truong Muoc assembled near the mountain, where they were reinforced by a nine-man sapper squad. The commandos were equipped with AK-47s, SKS carbines, explosives, hand grenades and three rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

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At 6PM on March 11 an artillery bombardment gave cover for Truong’s pathfinders to clear out mines and secure the infiltration paths to Lima 85. A few hours later, regular troops of the 766th Regiment of the NVA and a Pathet Lao battalions launched an attack that pinned down the Hmong troops in the valley around the mountain. Finally around 9 PM, Truong’s men began scaling up the cliff, the operators splitting into five “cells” to launch a multiprong attack. Cells One and two would concentrate on the command post, cells three and four would seize the TACAN equipment and airstrip respectively, and the fifth cell would remain in reserve.

The base personnel reported the artillery bombardment, but Ambassador Sullivan decided not to order an evacuation unless the attack proved to be overwhelming. Only by 8 AM the following morning did he dispatch helicopters and air support to cover the personnel’s escape.

This was far too late. The Truong’s infiltrators were in position by 3 AM that morning and knocked out Hmong guard posts and the base’s TSQ-81 radar and power generator using rocket-propelled grenades. When base commander Maj. Clarence Barton and several Air Force technicians rushed out to assess the situation, they were gunned down by the commandos. By 4 AM, the first three cells had captured all of their objectives. Some were captured and then flung over the cliff on Truong’s orders. Only cell 4 was forced to disengage from its objective, unable to dislodge a superior Hmong force of two infantry platoons and a mortar squad deployed around the airstrip.

Surviving U.S. personnel had fled to a ledge on the side of the cliff, where they were trapped as grenades and small arms fire rained down upon them. Firing back with their assault rifles, they attempted to call down an airstrike nearly on top of their position.

Finally at dawn, Air America helicopters covered by A-1 Skyraider attack planes swooped down upon the mountain. Hmong troops, led by two CIA agents and supported by Skyraiders, engaged in a fierce firefight as they attempted to dislodge the NVA commandos from the TACAN site. Though North Vietnamese platoon held its ground, the fracas provided a distraction for five surviving Air Force technicians and two CIA agents to be extracted.

Chief Master Sergeant Richard Etchberger, one of the airmen trapped on the cliff, refused to board a rescue chopper until he had loaded three of his injured comrades on the Huey’s rescue sling. As he was being lifted away, the Pennsylvanian was mortally wounded by a parting burst of assault rifle fire. Communist forces would retain control of Phou Pha Thai mountain and later repel a Hmong offensive to seize it back.

Muoc’s assault on Lima 85 had significantly weakened the U.S. air campaign over North Vietnam and Laos. According to Vietnamese accounts, he lost only one commando and killed at least forty-two Thai and Hmong troops as well as a dozen U.S. airmen. However, Truong would return home to a court-martial rather than a hero’s welcome; his superiors were outraged that he had destroyed the valuable TACAN equipment and killed the technicians instead of capturing them.

Ironically, both Washington and Hanoi collaborated in preserving the secrecy of their war in Laos. North Vietnam needed to maintain and secure the Ho Chi Minh trail’s route through Laos, while the U.S. military was compelled to try to stop them there. That both were violating a treaty they had signed was merely something that had to be concealed from the public.

In a tragic postscript, Etchberger would be posthumously nominated for the Medal of Honor, but would have the request denied by the Air Force due to the need to maintain the secrecy of the U.S. air war in Laos, which would actually escalate under the Nixon administration and be exposed with the release of the Pentagon Papers. The United States dropped one ton of bombs for every person living in Laos, delaying but not preventing, the eventual communist victory in 1975.

Only thirty years later did the United States officially acknowledge the battle at the clandestine site. Etchberger would finally be awarded the Medal of Honor in a ceremony on September 1, 2010. Earlier in the 2000s, Vietnamese veterans of the battle helped U.S. military personnel locate the remains of airmen that had been cast over the side of the cliff, and later those of Major Barton as well.

Preserving the memory of shadowy episodes like the battle of Lima 85 may not heal the wounds of the past, but it can help bring about an honest reckoning of the mistakes that were made and inspire reflection as to how to avoid repeating them in the future.

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 three years ago and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Wikipedia.

Sebastien Roblin

S-3 Viking, Americas

The long-legged jets proved extremely useful in a very wide variety of roles, whether as an electronic spy, submarine hunter, aerial tanker, cargo plane or even an attack jet.

Here's What You Need to Know: The Viking provided valuable service to the U.S. Navy by virtue of its very long range and adaptability to a wide variety of roles. It could likely have gone on doing so for many more years if newer, more expensive and more limited alternatives had not displaced it.

Eleven years ago the U.S. Navy retired:

A) Its only dedicated carrier-based tanker;

B) its last dedicated carrier-based antisubmarine airplane;

C) a carrier-based plane with more than twice the range of its current jets;

D) all of the above.

With a maximum speed of only five hundred miles per hour—many airliners fly faster—the S-3 Viking wasn’t about to be the subject of any movies starring Tom Cruise. However, the long-legged jets proved extremely useful in a very wide variety of roles, whether as an electronic spy, submarine hunter, aerial tanker, cargo plane or even an attack jet. And many of those roles have not been satisfactorily replaced since.

The S-3 Viking was first conceived in 1960s to serve as a next-generation submarine hunter. In the event of a war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the U.S. Navy’s most important mission would have been combating the Soviet Union’s large submarine fleet. If the war went nuclear, Soviet ballistic-missile submarines could have wreaked terrible devastation on U.S. cities. And if the conflict remained conventional, then attack submarines would have done their best to sink convoys of American troop ships reinforcing NATO forces in Europe.

During World War II, carrier-based aircraft such as the TBF Avenger torpedo bomber played a major role in sinking Axis submarines. However, the diesel-electric submarines of that era needed to surface frequently to recharge their batteries, exposing themselves to air attack. By the late 1950s, the Soviet Union had begun to deploy its first nuclear submarines, which could remain submerged for weeks, and later months, at a time, and the current S-2 submarine hunters were no adequate for chasing them down.

Lockheed partnered with LTV—which had experience developing the carrier-based A-7 and F-8 jets—in producing a new antisubmarine plane with a sophisticated new design. The resulting twin turbofan jet seated a crew of four in a two-by-two configuration, including a pilot and copilot, a sensor operator and tactical coordinator. The long-legged plane had a range of 2,300 miles and came with an aerial refueling probe that could extend that even further—leading on one occasion to an S-3 flying thirteen hours from a carrier in the Mediterranean to Washington, DC, carrying a captured terrorist hijacker.

The plane’s twin TF-34-400 turbofans—an engine related to that on the A-10 attack plane—were infamous for their peculiar vacuum-cleaner-like whine, leading to the plane’s nickname of "Hoover."

The Viking’s crew had access to a diverse array of sensors, starting with a APS-116 sea-search radar that could switch between a high-resolution mode for detecting submarine periscopes and a long-range mode that could extend up to 150 miles. A meters-long Magnetic Anomaly Detector boom could extend from the tail to scan the water for the metal in submarine hulls. The Viking also carried up to sixty sonar buoys to aid in tracking submarines, an infrared sensor and an ALR-47 ESM sensor that could track electromagnetic emitters. Most impressively, the Viking was one of the first U.S. planes to implement a degree of data fusion between the various sensors.

The Viking’s internal weapons bay and external wing pylons could carry a diverse array of weapons including homing torpedoes, CAPTOR antiship mines, Harpoon antiship missiles, unguided bombs, rocket pods and even nuclear gravity bombs.

The S-3A entered operational service in 1974 with VS-41, and soon each carrier had its own squadron of the antisubmarine planes. Though the U.S. Navy fortunately did not engage in any actual antisubmarine warfare in the subsequent decades, the records of S-3 squadrons suggest they might have proved pretty effective at their job. For example, in 1984 a Viking was the first NATO platform to detect a new class of Russian submarines, and in 1986, S-3s of VS-28 flying from the USS Independence detected submarines from eight different countries while on a cruise in the Mediterranean. Around that time the Navy began upgrading over a hundred Vikings to the S-3B model, which came with new APS-137 synthetic aperture radars with high enough resolution to identify ships by class.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy began assigning additional roles to the S-3 Viking. For example, taking advantage of the type’s large hull, six Vikings were modified into US-3A cargo planes modified to serve as special high-priority Carrier On-Deck Delivery planes, capable of carrying six passengers and up to four thousand pounds of cargo.

The Viking also took on a new role as an electronic spy, particularly with the sixteen modified ES-3 Sea Shadow aircraft that entered service in 1993. These signals-intelligence aircraft were capable of spying on enemy communications and determining the position of hostile transmitters so that friendly forces could target them. The Sea Shadows had a brief but eventful operational career, helping identify targets during the air wars over former Yugoslavia and enforcing the no-fly zone over Iraq before being retired from service in 1998 in favor of a replacement program that never materialized. There were also a half-dozen unique variants of the Viking, including “Aladdin” and “Beartrap” aircraft, engaged in intelligence missions that remain classified to this day.

Meanwhile, one of the Viking’s most important roles was serving as an aerial refueling tanker. After the Navy retired its KA-6 Intruder refueling planes in the mid-nineties, the S-3 remained the only carrier-based tanker plane available until the Navy began introducing air-refueling-capable Super Hornet fighters in 2002. Particularly during the U.S. intervention against the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, the Viking flew countless refueling sorties to give short-ranged fighters aboard U.S. carriers the reach to participate in the conflict.

The poky S-3 even saw action in the antiship and air-to-ground role, starting with the destruction of an Iraqi Silkworm antiship missile during the 1991 Gulf War using AGM-84 SLAM missiles. Vikings also sank several Iraqi patrol boats and destroyed antiaircraft guns and coastal radars during the conflict. More than a decade later, an S-3 crippled Saddam Hussein’s 350-foot personal yacht Al Mansur in its harbor at Basra using an infrared guided Maverick missile. The boat was, however, subsequently hit by Tomcat fighters.

In fact, the airplane would soon play a pivotal role in the infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech, when an S-3A was filmed to great fanfare landing President George W. Bush aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003. Though the carrier was only thirty miles away from shore, well within range of a helicopter delivery, the Viking was chosen for its dramatic appeal.

However, the Navy was intent on phasing the Viking out, skeptical that it was worth the effort to continually upgrade the aircraft’s systems. The last operational Vikings were actually flying out of Al Asad Air Base in Iraq’s Anbar Province in 2008, where they were using LANTIRN infrared targeting and navigation pods to identify ambushes and roadside mines in advance of friendly convoys, proving the type’s versatility until the very end.

The Navy finally retired its last S-3 squadron in January 2009, though three aircraft continued to serve on in the experimental VX-30 unit until 2016. Pilots in the unit remarked the onboard sensors remained so effective that they were detecting “schools of dolphins and patches of seaweed.” The retired airframes now lie in storage in the “Boneyard” facility in Arizona. An inspection revealed the airframes had only flown around ten thousand hours out of a potential twenty-three-thousand-hour service life. The last remaining S-3 in service is an experimental research plane flown by NASA.

This led Lockheed to propose refitting the S-3s to serve as replacements for the reliable C-2 Greyhound cargo plane the Navy was retiring from the Carrier Onboard Delivery role. However, in 2015 the Navy chose to instead purchase the tilt-rotor CMV-22B Osprey instead. The Osprey has much shorter range than either the Greyhound or the proposed S-3 variant, is slower and more expensive to operate per flight hour, and cannot fly high or in adverse weather conditions due to its unpressurized crew compartment. But using the Osprey does allow the Navy to directly resupply non-carrier-based ships directly, rather than having to land cargo on the carrier by plane and then redistribute to other ships via helicopter.

For several years, it also appeared likely that South Korea might purchase up to thirty-six refurbished S-3s to assist in its efforts to hunt down North Korea’s large submarine force, which includes numerous minisubmarines that have on more than one occasion caused considerable havoc. However, in March 2017 Aviation Weekly reported that Seoul had passed over the Viking and is now interested in the much larger P-8 Poseidon maritime-patrol plane.

The Navy is unlikely to return to the Viking, despite its demonstrated flexibility. This is out of a defensible preference for operating fewer different types of aircraft to maximize efficiency in training, maintenance and spare parts. However, the Viking’s retirements reinforces the Navy’s continued reliance on short-range carrier-based aircraft, which is becoming an increasing liability as more capable shore-based missiles threaten carriers at or beyond the maximum combat radius of their onboard aircraft.

Take, for example, the carrier air wing’s reliance on Super Hornet fighters to serve as air-refueling tankers. While it is to the Super Hornets credit that it can perform this role, it is hardly an optimal use of the flight-hours of a high-performance fighter plane. Furthermore, a Super Hornet tanker cannot carry as much fuel as a dedicated tanker.

In fact, missile-equipped Vikings would have slightly less than twice the combat radius of a Super Hornet equipped with extra fuel tanks. Of course, the Viking is not an airplane that wants to get to close to well-defended airspace, but it might still offer carrier air wings a useful capability for delivering stand-off attacks at much greater range.

Finally, there is the matter of the antisubmarine mission, which has no fixed-wing replacement onboard American carriers. While Navy SH-60 Seahawk helicopters provide antisubmarine protection, they can only operate over fairly short distances at low speeds, suitable for close protection rather than large area patrols. Long-distance patrol duties are now confined to large P-3 and P-8 maritime patrol planes, which operate from bases on land. This means the carriers can only make limited contributions to the antisubmarine mission, even though we live in a time when cheap and effective submarines are proliferating to an unprecedented degree in the Pacific, and submarines have repeatedly succeeded in slipping through defenses to sink carriers in naval exercises.

The Viking provided valuable service to the U.S. Navy by virtue of its very long range and adaptability to a wide variety of roles. It could likely have gone on doing so for many more years if newer, more expensive and more limited alternatives had not displaced it.

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 2017.

Image: Wikipedia.

Mark Episkopos

Pandemic, Eurasia

The Delta variant is roiling Moscow with a sudden surge in coronavirus infections and fatalities, but life in Russia’s capital is proceeding largely as normal—for now.

As Russia struggles to maintain an air of normalcy over one year into the global pandemic, the threat of a new coronavirus wave looms over the country’s metropolitan centers.  

Reuters’ coronavirus tracker estimates that just under 80,000,000 doses of coronavirus vaccines were administered in Russia. Assuming every person needs two doses, this means that no more than 30 percent of the population is vaccinated according to the latest publicly available data. There have been 6.75 million recorded coronavirus cases in Russia, with an associated death toll of around 180,000.  

Russia’s Defense Ministry reported earlier this week that the country’s lowest coronavirus mortality rate is in the Armed Forces, citing the military’s sophisticated network of telemedicine consulting and sixteen newly created mobile technical units. For the military, as well as large swathes of Russia’s public service and around 60 percent of Moscow’s service sector, vaccination is mandatory. But there is research to suggest that vaccine hesitancy remains high among the general population despite the Kremlin’s ongoing public relations campaign to encourage nationwide mass vaccinations. According to survey data provided by the Levada Center, Russia’s vaccine hesitancy rates are among the highest in the world. Among those who say they are not ready to get vaccinated, a plurality are concerned with potential side effects and as many as 41 percent say that they will not get vaccinated under any circumstances. From recipients using prosthetic arms to dodge the jab to reports of a sprawling black market for forged vaccination certificates, Russian vaccine detractors are employing a wide-ranging set of countermeasures to bypass vaccination requirements. Russian President Vladimir Putin has regularly encouraged all Russians to get the shot but does not support a compulsory national vaccination mandate, saying earlier this summer that such a measure would be “counterproductive.”  

The Delta variant is roiling Moscow with a sudden surge in coronavirus infections and fatalities, but life in Russia’s capital is proceeding largely as normal—for now.  Sweeping mask and glove mandates are in place for most venues of public life in Moscow, including all stores, government buildings, corporate offices, the metro system, and more. These measures are religiously observed by public and private workers for fear of direct and enforceable professional repercussions. By the same token, Moscow’s coronavirus restrictions are largely disregarded by shop patrons, metro commuters, and others on the receiving end of services.  

Russian Health experts have warned that Moscow and other urban centers could be on the cusp of a new spike in coronavirus cases, spurred by the start of a fresh school semester and the return of summer vacationers back to the country’s large cities. Russian authorities have estimated that, if the national vaccination rate does not pick up significantly, healthcare outlays on coronavirus patients can reach 111.4 billion rubles, or upwards of 1.5 billion dollars, in the second half of 2021.  

There is mounting speculation that the ruling United Russia party may reintroduce much harsher coronavirus restrictions in Moscow, including a return to a QR code system for access to restaurants, most shops, and the metro system, shortly following its likely victory in the September 2021 Russian legislative election. 

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

Image: Reuters

James Holmes

Great Power Competition, Indo-Pacific

The QUAD is no military alliance like NATO. But to effectively curb China, its members should look to it for military strategy.

Here's what to remember: QUAD members mainly need to be precise when explaining their purposes and how they intend to put power to work attaining them. That means being circumspect about the terms they use to describe China policy. But they should own it on the military side. 

China grumps that the Quad, a league of like-minded Indo-Pacific democracies, is an “Asian NATO” or “mini-NATO” hellbent on “containing” China.

If only. 

Now, Beijing is not entirely wrong to liken the Quad to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Quad governments—representing India, Australia, Japan, and the United States—sometimes do things reminiscent of the Atlantic alliance. For instance, the four Quad navies just finished up with this year’s Malabar exercise in the Arabian Sea, showing they can work together and push back as China tries to make itself a serious if not dominant player in the Indian Ocean region. NATO navies commonly maneuver together, casting a counterweight to Russian ambitions in the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent seas. 

But one of these things is not like the other. In reality, the Quad is a loose consortium, not a standing alliance anchored by a collective defense treaty. The arrangement bears more resemblance to the pre-World War I “entente cordiale” than to NATO. In April 1904 the French and British governments signed a series of agreements settling long-standing colonial quarrels. Setting aside centuries of on-again-off-again enmity, the two democracies drew together against the common danger manifest in autocratic Germany.

Kaiser Wilhelm II and his lieutenants repeatedly sought to break the entente in ensuing years, yet their bellicose diplomatic methods only cemented it. French ally Russia ultimately joined in, and the “Triple Entente” was on. As a result, a coalition—not a formal alliance—squared off against imperial Germany and its allies in 1914. Pre-war European alliance politics should come as cold comfort to Beijing. It shows that an overbearing power can prompt its opponents to make a common cause even when no mutual defense accord binds them to do so. 

It also shows they can win. 

NATO itself is something of an anomaly, as indeed is the array of alliances the United States has headed since 1945. Namely, the protracted strategic competition known as the Cold War lurched into being during the immediate aftermath of a system-shattering global war. The victorious World War II allies fell out against one another in the months after peace came. The Iron Curtain descended across Europe while America sought to rally the noncommunist world to oppose Soviet expansionism.

The anomaly is this. U.S. forces were already on the ground in war-stricken parts of the world, helping enforce the peace and reconstruct devastated countries. Allies did not invite America to construct and garrison bases on their soil during peacetime. That would have been a tough sell with host governments and peoples. U.S. forces came as conquerors; they stayed to hedge against fresh aggression. Facts on the ground simplified the challenge of forging Cold War alliances. 

In a real sense, then, U.S. containment strategy was an artifact of World War II. 

Lord “Pug” Ismay, the first secretary-general of NATO, encapsulated the alliance’s rationale breezily but accurately: its reason for being was to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down. Keep being the keyword. The Americans were already in; they did not have to be invited in. That made it politically easier for allied governments to ask them to stay, helping keep the Soviets behind the Iron Curtain and hold down new militarism in Germany. 

The American presence was the status quo—not some radical break from the status quo. And it’s easier to defend an established status quo than to disturb one. 

Similar logic held in Asia, where the defeat of Japan splintered the Japanese Empire into its constituent parts, many—including Japan itself—under direct U.S. military occupation. The U.S.-Japan security alliance was a kind of bilateral NATO meant to keep the Russians and Chinese out, the Americans in, and the Japanese down. South Koreans didn’t need to be kept down. After being ravaged by World War II and the Korean War, though, they consented to a strong U.S. military presence to keep North Koreans and their communist backers out and Americans in. 

Lord Ismay’s quip furnishes a powerful instrument for evaluating U.S.-led alliances past, present, and future. That instrument indicates that the Quad stands apart from long-standing alliances. The United States is not an occupying power in Quad members. Its presence in Japan long ago evolved into a mutual arrangement. Indeed, the U.S.-Japanese duo is more an alliance of equals by the day. 

Australia is arguably America’s closest friend on the planet yet remains reluctant to permit a standing presence that might entangle Canberra in adventures it prefers to avoid. The Australian government does allow U.S. Marine contingents to deploy to the northern harbor of Darwin on a rotating basis. Still, the situation bears scant resemblance to Europe or East Asia during the early Cold War. 

And India? Fuggedaboutit. New Delhi pioneered nonalignment during the Cold War. It had an occasionally fraught relationship with the United States (and a cozy one with the Soviet Union) whose legacy the partners are only now transcending. And a tradition of autonomy is etched on Indian strategic culture. India regards itself as a benign hegemon over the Indian Ocean region. No hegemon readily submits to an alliance headed by outsiders, let alone allows outsiders to establish a standing military presence on its territory. Only under extreme duress would New Delhi break with strategic autonomy.

The Quad is no NATO. 

The Quad is an option. It lays the groundwork for multinational operations should Quad leaders choose to avail themselves of that option, while not committing them to collective ventures from which they choose to abstain. Exercises like Malabar acquaint the partners with one another’s hardware, procedures, tactics, and cultural quirks. They build “interoperability,” or even “interchangeability,” between particularly close partners. Capability accumulated during peacetime does not have to be invented on the fly during wartime. 

What is that option for? Here it’s worth parsing China’s “containment” metaphor. Containment, of course, is a Cold War term. According to George F. Kennan’s iconic diagnosis of the Soviet challenge and his prescribed remedy, resisting communist expansionism would deprive Marxism-Leninism of its motive force over time. If denied the ability to claim that communism stood at the vanguard of history and was sweeping the globe, Moscow and fraternal governments would mellow over time. They might fall. 

Containment was both a policy and a strategy. As a policy, it does not fit contemporary China. Apart from being a big, ambitious, often domineering power, China today is not the Soviet Union circa 1949 when the North Atlantic Treaty—the Atlantic alliance’s founding document—was signed. Beijing does not appear intent on subverting or overthrowing foreign governments and turning them communist. It is economically intertwined with the noncommunist world to a degree unimaginable for the Soviet Union. Policy vis-à-vis China is something different and merits a different title.

As a strategy—in particular a military and naval strategy—containment is a fitting metaphor. This is clearest in East Asia, where the U.S. armed forces are reconfiguring themselves to fight among the islands, denying China’s navy and air force control of sea and sky. This approach comes straight out of the Cold War playbook, from the days when Secretary of State Dean Acheson called for making the first island chain America’s “defensive perimeter of the Pacific.”

The approach applies in the Indian Ocean as well, albeit in a fashion that is more scattered and not so visually striking when plotted on the map. Curbing Beijing’s effort to gain military access to Indian Ocean seaports is itself a way to contain China’s martial reach—and one well worth pursuing. 

Quad members may shy away from the containment metaphor, and that is understandable. They mainly need to be precise when explaining their purposes and how they intend to put power to work attaining them. That means being circumspect about the terms they use to describe China policy. But they should own it on the military side. 

Let’s dust off the Cold War playbook—and be candid about it. Lord Ismay would smile. 

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College. His books have been named to the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Indo-Pacific Command Professional Reading Lists. The views voiced here are his alone.

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

Image: Reuters

James Holmes

China Missile, East Asia

One report stops short of espousing an Asian NATO by name, but invokes the basic concept underlying the Atlantic Alliance.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Allies and partners should devise strategies and operations that hold down the price of access for U.S. forces—and thus make it thinkable if not easy for an American president to order them into combat.

Last week the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Center (USSC) set policy circles aflutter when it issued a novella-length report that questions the staying power of U.S. military strategy in the Indo-Pacific theater while urging inhabitants of the region to take up their share of the defense burden vis-à-vis a domineering China. Read the whole thing.

In one sense the report presents little new information or insight. That the U.S. military has retooled itself for counterinsurgency warfare and must now reinvent itself again for great power strategic competition is old news. So is the notion that Washington suffers from strategic ADHD, taking on new commitments around the world willy-nilly while shedding few old ones to conserve finite resources and policy energy. Over the past decade-plus, it’s become plain that Communist China is a serious, strategically-minded maritime contender and has equipped itself with formidable shore-based weaponry to assail U.S. and allied bases in the region and supply firepower support to its increasingly impressive battle fleet. Beijing can now hope to fend off U.S. reinforcements from coming to the aid of regional allies, to slow them down, or to make the effort so expensive in terms of lives and hardware that no U.S. president would order the attempt. If it does any of these things it could spring a fait accompli on the region, accomplishing limited goals before powerful outsiders could intercede.

This is old—if still potent—wine in a new bottle.

And yet. The report is clearly written and forceful, no small virtues. It adds a welcome new voice to the chorus—and that voice booms out from the region rather than from such precincts as Washington, DC or Newport, RI. One hopes the leadership in Canberra listens up, and other Indo-Pacific governments wary of Chinese Communist Party pretensions should bend an ear as well. The USSC coauthors’ central message—that the United States can no longer provide for common security alone and must have help—is precisely correct. They stop short of espousing an Asian NATO by name, but they invoke the basic concept underlying the Atlantic Alliance, namely “collective defense.” Allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific must shoulder their part of the defense burden, just as Europeans helped stave off the Soviet menace.

For its part, Washington must stop trying to do it all alone—and afford allies and friends the deference their interests and contributions warrant. All parties to the common defense must readjust not just strategy, resources, and hardware but also their way of thinking about these matters. They must nurture a culture of collective defense.

Three points the report puts forward are worth exploring: culture, strategy and operations, and alliance building and maintenance. First, culture. Note the coauthors: “In an era of constrained budgets and multiplying geopolitical flashpoints, prioritizing great power competition with China means America’s armed forces must scale back other global responsibilities.” But culture is a stubborn thing—and the strategic culture in Washington lags behind disconcerting new realities. The report maintains that “political leaders and much of the foreign policy establishment remain wedded to a superpower mindset that regards America’s role in the world as defending an expansive liberal order.” Acting as the lone custodian of the world order, including freedom of the sea, sets the United States up for strategic overreach and failure. Something will give.

The classics of strategy instruct statesmen and military commanders to wind down commitments or theaters that have outlived their usefulness, that no longer command the same importance they once did, or that have come to consume resources needed for more pressing priorities. That’s easy to say. It’s a simple matter of toting up costs and benefits, estimating the opportunity costs of one commitment against another, applying resources to the most important priorities, and downgrading or jettisoning the rest. But breaking up is hard to do, even with an Afghanistan where eighteen years of combat and diplomacy have yet to yield a durable sovereign government. Why such obtuse stick-to-it-iveness? Because every foreign commitment attracts a constituency within the establishment, the think-tank sector, or academia. That constituency sees its chosen commitment as the top priority for Washington, bar none, and clamors tirelessly for policy attention and resources.

For bureaucratic institutions, the easiest path is to try to please everyone and do everything. Yet setting and enforcing priorities is what strategy is at its most fundamental. Political leaders must harden their hearts when deciding on policy and strategy. If the Indo-Pacific is now the most critical geopolitical theater, other worthwhile commitments may have to give way.

Second, strategy and operations. The Australian coauthors do not counsel despair. They deny that “America is becoming a paper tiger.” It still fields “the world’s largest and most sophisticated armed forces, and is likely to continue to supply the central elements of any military counterweight to China in the Indo-Pacific.” Still, “the United States’ longstanding ability to uphold a favorable regional balance of power by itself faces mounting and ultimately insurmountable challenges.” Just so. But let’s not sell ourselves short, either as the U.S. armed forces or as part of alliances that have endured for seven decades. It may be the case that Fortress China now boasts the capacity to reach out and smite allied military bases, or even forces in the field. But let’s refuse to succumb to a reverse form of the fallacy of “scriptwriting.” We have options.

Scriptwriting in strategy reduces a living, thinking, impassioned foe to an inert, docile mass on which we work our will. Scriptwriters in Los Angeles or New York develop storylines that instruct the characters in a drama or sitcom what to do, and the actors do it. But in strategic competition or warfare, some of the “actors” in our script are under no obligation to play the part we set out for them. In fact, they have every incentive to go off-script and wreck our production so that they can fulfill goals diametrically opposed to our own. Now flip that logic around. Sure, Communist China may be able to pound our legacy infrastructure or forces. But the United States and its allies aren’t lifeless masses. We too have ingenuity and the desire to prevail. Let’s refuse to follow Beijing’s script—and figure out how to ruin its production.

How do multinational and joint forces go off China’s script? The U.S. Studies Center insists that girding for strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific “will not be easy or cheap. On the contrary, it will require major changes to the U.S. military’s force structure, regional posture and concepts of operations, only some of which are currently in train.” But dodging the brunt of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) strategy while giving PLA commanders strategic headaches may be less burdensome than all that. Read the Commandant’s Planning Guidance issued by the new U.S. Marine Corps leadership last month. Geography favors the allies. They can deploy low-cost measures along the first island chain, throwing up a barricade to Chinese maritime movement between the China seas, the Western Pacific, and the Indian Ocean. Small bodies of ground troops could fan out along the island chain, using volleys of anti-ship missiles to halt surface traffic. Sea mines, diesel submarines, and surface patrol craft could lend their firepower to the mix. Etc.

There’s no free lunch in strategy, but such measures could levy some serious military, economic, and diplomatic pain at manageable cost to the allies. One leading strategy professor in China pronounces challenging such a strategy a “suicide mission” for the PLA. If that reflects how Chinese Communist magnates reckon matters, then the prospects for deterrence—and thus for peacetime strategic success—may be brighter and more affordable than the Australian team lets on. Offbeat approaches to force design, operations, and strategy merit debating in allied circles.

And third, alliance building and maintenance. There are unmistakable signs that what the strategic canon calls a “community of interest” is gelling around the idea of counterbalancing Chinese overreach. What the U.S. Studies Center depicts as a brave new world in the Indo-Pacific is in many ways a return to geopolitical business as usual. During the Cold War, few deluded themselves that the United States could deter or defeat the Soviet empire all by itself. Allies chipped in niche capabilities without which the U.S. armed forces would have found it hard to execute their strategy. For instance, I was grateful to NATO navies for supplying minesweepers in the Persian Gulf back in 1991. Approaching the Kuwaiti coast would have been perilous in the extreme without Europeans running interference for us. Mine warfare is a traditional zone of neglect for the U.S. Navy—not so for the allies. Same goes for the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, whose diesel submarines prowled along the first island chain throughout the Cold War to cramp communist maritime movement. Another niche but invaluable capability.

Such examples are legion. It’s good to see allies take ownership of their own security, and of freedom of the sea. The French and British governments have bruited about a return to Asia, possibly including naval bases in the South China Sea where aircraft-carrier groups can tarry. Here’s how a grand bargain could work should the USSC team get its way. A Golden Rule governs alliances and ententes of all types: the ally who furnishes the gold makes the rules. If Washington could provide for the common defense all by itself, it would have little reason to consult with allies or heed their advice. It would remain the sole agenda-setter. But if others contribute significant resources of their own, Washington must consult with them and consider—and perhaps embrace—their advice. U.S. leaders often deferred to allies during the Cold War, allowing them a say in policy and strategy. Consensus prevailed for the most part, even when decisions ran afoul of American preferences. And U.S. alliances proved resilient for the most part.

So America needs to rediscover the habit of strategic humility after being top dog for a generation. Here’s what Indo-Pacific allies need to do: help us help you. Even if island-chain defense works out, U.S. reinforcements must gain access to the Western Pacific to prevail in wartime. PLA commanders have predicated their access-denial strategy on disheartening their U.S. counterparts or convincing the U.S. administration the military effort cannot succeed at a cost the country is prepared to pay. Allies and partners should devise strategies and operations that hold down the price of access for U.S. forces—and thus make it thinkable if not easy for an American president to order them into combat.

Let’s march jointly in the Indo-Pacific.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific. The views voiced here are his alone. 

This piece was originally featured in 2019 and is being republished due to reader's interest.

Image: Reuters

James Holmes

US Navy, Asia

The Chinese Navy doesn't need to be larger-than-life. It only needs to seem like it is.

Here's What You Need To Remember: By deploying even lesser forces with skill and dexterity, PLA commanders can sow doubt among U.S. allies fearful of being abandoned to the wrath of Asia’s would-be hegemon.

Admirals say the darnedest things. Over at the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings magazine, retired U.S. Pacific Command Intelligence Chief Capt. Jim Fanell takes PACOM kahunas, past and present, to task for disparaging China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). Respect for prospective foes, proclaims Captain Fanell, constitutes the most prudent attitude.

Such counsel is evergreen.

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

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Military folk must beware of hubris, the worst of all strategic habits. As ancient Greeks warned, hubris begets nemesis, meaning divine retribution. It’s insidious—especially for a force like the U.S. Navy. After all, it’s been twenty-six years since the Cold War. Few sailors or naval aviators now in uniform have known anything except American maritime supremacy. Such a historical interlude can give rise to triumphalism that taints assessments of rising challengers.

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Last month, for instance, erstwhile PACOM commander Adm. Dennis Blair told a naval conference that China’s military has failed to amass “maritime and air superiority” and thus cannot degrade American deterrence or treaty commitments in the Far East. Around the same time, testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, current PACOM supremo, Adm. Harry Harris, likened comparing PLAN and U.S. Navy submarines to “comparing a Model T with a Corvette.”

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The impression conveyed in both instances: nothing to worry about here, move along.

Fanell takes exception to these statements on two grounds. First, that disparaging the PLAN flouts the reality of mounting Chinese martial prowess and material capability. And second, that insinuating the PLAN isn’t battleworthy betrays a political tin ear. Pooh-poohing the challenge damps congressional and popular support for the larger U.S. Navy that the Trump administration and Navy leaders have been pushing. Thus, the admirals convey a false impression of China’s navy and then compound that error by sapping political support for rebuilding the U.S. Navy.

This amounts to self-defeating conduct on naval potentates’ part. After all, if China’s navy remains little more than a nuisance, as not just admirals but learned commentators sometimes say, why should lawmakers fund a pricey naval buildup to counter it?

Let’s take Fanell’s points in turn, starting with Admiral Blair. By “maritime superiority,” Blair presumably means “sea control,” the usual term. My colleague, professor Milan Vego, defines sea control as “one’s ability to use a given part of the ocean/sea and the associated air (space) for military and nonmilitary purposes and to deny the same to the enemy in a time of open hostilities.”

U.S. Air Force doctrine, meanwhile, depicts “air superiority” as “that degree of control of the air by one force that permits the conduct of its operations at a given time and place without prohibitive interference from air and missile threats.” It may be “localized in space and time,” or “broad and enduring.”

The common denominator is physical space. Sea control and air superiority connote imposing enough control of physical space to fulfill one’s purposes while preventing a foe from fulfilling its purposes.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Blair has it right and China’s military can’t wrest sea or air superiority from the U.S. military and its partners—even in China’s own environs. Isn’t it reasonable to conclude that an inferior PLAN cannot degrade American deterrence or security guarantees?

Well, no. By deploying even lesser forces with skill and dexterity, PLA commanders can sow doubt among U.S. allies fearful of being abandoned to the wrath of Asia’s would-be hegemon.

Henry Kissinger’s workmanlike formula for deterrence constitutes a serviceable formula for reassurance as well. Deterrence, writes Kissinger, is a product of three variables: “power, the will to use it, and the assessment of these by the potential aggressor.” All three are critical. And because “deterrence is a product of those factors and not a sum,” deterrence drops to zero if any one variable does.

Deterrence, then, is about fielding formidable capabilities and mustering the moxie to use them. Capability and willpower represent the two basic components of strength for any combatant. But deterrence comes down to making the antagonist a believer in one’s capability and resolve. The most musclebound, most stalwart competitor cannot deter an unbeliever.

The same goes for reassurance except the target audience is different. An ally must convince its partners that it is strong and resolute enough to uphold its security guarantees. If an ally comes to doubt a fellow ally’s power, or an allied leaders’ gumption to use it, then the consortium could falter or fall through altogether. Unbelief could seep into friendly capitals.

So how can China implant doubt in U.S. allies’ minds if the PLA still holds a weaker hand? Simple: it can execute its longstanding strategy of anti-access and area denial—a strategy premised on persuading U.S. leaders that they cannot win a Pacific war at a cost they’re willing to pay.

As strategic grandmaster Carl von Clausewitz observes, the value a combatant affixes to its political aims determines how many resources it invests to attain those aims, and how long it keeps up the investment. How badly that combatant wants its goals, in other words, determines how lavishly it spends on them, and for how long. If an East Asian venture’s price tag is too high—or if China’s armed forces can drive it too high—U.S. leaders may conclude the venture isn’t worth the expense.

If so, Clausewitz would counsel them to forego it.

China, consequently, doesn’t need to command sea or sky, either partially or wholly, to prevail in a trial of arms—let alone to deter in peacetime. It only needs to convince Washington, DC the price of, say, defending the Senkaku Islands is too steep considering the meager value Americans attach to the archipelago.

Beijing can ask, sotto voce: how many American lives, and how many aircraft carriers, destroyers, or fighter aircraft, is a group of uninhabited islets worth to you? If the PLA can plausibly threaten to inflict costs greater than that outlay, then U.S. leaders may do the Clausewitzian thing and abjure the effort. In light of that possibility, Tokyo could come to question whether Washington will really keep its pledge to defend the Senkaku Islands.

Doubt would have been sowed, and the U.S.-Japan alliance would have wavered—all without Chinese forces’ seizing maritime or air superiority through combat. This is the logic of anti-access and area denial. The weak need not prevail on oceanic battlegrounds. They only need to prevail in their enemies’ minds, skewing cost/benefit calculations to China’s benefit. So it is China that could deter—and loosen U.S.-led alliances in the bargain.

Blair’s blithe dismissal of Chinese military power scants all of this.

Now for Admiral Harris. As Jim Fanell notes, comparing Chinese with American submarines misleads. PLAN commanders envision using diesel boats to ambush oncoming U.S. Pacific Fleet surface forces in times of war, elevating the costs of entry into the Western Pacific. Kilo- or Yuan-class boats will blast away with anti-ship cruise missiles, exacting as high a toll as they can. Undersea warfare, then, represents one of the pillars of China’s anti-access strategy.

Yet the PLAN submarine fleet is not a fleet meant for fighting other submarines. That’s why Admiral Harris’s quip deceives. One of these things is not like the other. Boat-for-boat comparisons reveal little.

Now, U.S. Navy nuclear-powered attack boats (SSNs) would hunt PLAN submarines should war come, and they indeed embody the state of the art. They are also few—and dwindling—in numbers, and they carry only short-range armament. Indeed, American boats must get within about ten nautical miles to launch their torpedoes. Swing a circle with a ten-nautical-mile radius around a point on your map of the Pacific Ocean. That’s the area where a U.S. Navy submarine cruising at that point can strike. You’ll notice that area is microscopic amid the ocean’s empty vastness.

Will U.S. anti-submarine forces really—as Harris implies—make short work of silent-running PLAN diesel boats dispersed for picket duty within this broad expanse? Color me skeptical.

So U.S. Navy SSNs may be Corvettes relative to PLAN Model Ts, but it may not matter much. Primitive implements can do many jobs. The Corvette is an artisanal vehicle, manufactured in small batches for well-heeled sports-car enthusiasts. The Model T was an inexpensive automobile mass-produced for Americans shopping on a budget. And yet both vehicles got drivers and passengers from point A to point B at acceptable speeds and in acceptable comfort for their day.

Now transpose Harris’s analogy to naval warfare. Long-term strategic competition involves competing on the cheap while goading competitors into competing at exorbitant cost. Is the U.S. Navy competing cost-effectively? Well, the latest-model Chevy Corvette Z06 runs over $80,000. One imagines some carmaker could put the 1927-vintage Ford Model T back into production for a minuscule fraction of that (assuming there was a market for creaky low-tech vehicles).

Similarly, a Virginia-class SSN sets back the U.S. Navy some $2.7 billion. Beijing divulges few details about how much platforms or weaponry cost, but the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force can acquire a Soryu-class diesel sub for about $540 million, one-fifth of the sticker price of the Virginia’s class. The Japanese boat is a rough counterpart to PLAN diesel boats, so use it as a yardstick. If China can purchase five submarines that meet its needs for the same price the United States can purchase one, then who’s competing more efficiently and effectively?

Which brings us to a basic point: “good enough” constitutes the standard of excellence for military hardware. If China’s navy can execute its strategy with an armada of Model Ts while the U.S. Navy bankrupts itself struggling to procure enough Corvettes, then who gets the last laugh? The answer is far from obvious. Practitioners of competitive strategies—the art of competing at low cost to oneself and high cost to rivals—would applaud the miser while fretting over the spendthrift’s prospects.

American seafarers, accordingly, had better heed Fanell’s critique. We should respect a potential foe able to make do with Model Ts, not scoff at it. That’s an adversary well equipped to compete over the long haul. Heck, if it’s smart, then the U.S. Navy might afford China the sincerest form of flattery—and kick the tires on some Model Ts itself.

James Holmes is professor of strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific. The views voiced here are his alone. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Sebastien Roblin

Su-35, Europe

The Su-35 is an evolution of the Su-27 Flanker, a late Cold War design intended to match the F-15 in concept.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The Su-35 may be the best jet-age dogfighter ever made and a capable missile delivery platform—but whether that will suffice for an air-superiority fighter in the era of stealth technology remains to be seen.

The Sukhoi Su-35 Flanker-E is the top Russian air-superiority fighter in service today, and represents the pinnacle of fourth-generation jet fighter design. It will remain so until Russia succeeds in bringing its fifth-generation PAK-FA stealth fighter into production.

Distinguished by its unrivaled maneuverability, most of the Su-35’s electronics and weapons capabilities have caught up with those of Western equivalents, like the F-15 Eagle. But while it may be a deadly adversary to F-15s, Eurofighters and Rafales, the big question mark remains how effectively it can contend with fifth-generation stealth fighters such as the F-22 and F-35.

History

The Su-35 is an evolution of the Su-27 Flanker, a late Cold War design intended to match the F-15 in concept: a heavy twin-engine multirole fighter combining excellent speed and weapons loadout with dogfighting agility.

An Su-27 stunned the audience of the Paris Air Show in 1989 when it demonstrated Pugachev’s Cobra, a maneuver in which the fighter rears its nose up to 120-degree vertical—but continues to soar forward along the plane’s original attitude.

Widely exported, the Flanker has yet to clash with Western fighters, but did see air-to-air combat in Ethiopian service during a border war with Eritrea, scoring four kills against MiG-29s for no loss. It has also been employed on ground attack missions.

The development history of the Su-35 is a bit complicated. An upgraded Flanker with canards (additional small wings on the forward fuselage) called the Su-35 first appeared way back in 1989, but is not the same plane as the current model; only fifteen were produced. Another upgraded Flanker, the two-seat Su-30, has been produced in significant quantities, and its variants exported to nearly a dozen countries.

The current model in question, without canards, is properly called the Su-35S and is the most advanced type of the Flanker family. It began development in 2003 under the Komsomolsk-on-Amur Aircraft Production Association (KnAAPO), a subcontractor of Sukhoi. The first prototypes rolled out in 2007 and production began in 2009.

Airframe and Engines

The Flanker family of aircraft is supermaneuverable—meaning it is engineered to perform controlled maneuvers that are impossible through regular aerodynamic mechanisms. In the Su-35, this is in part achieved through use of thrust-vectoring engines: the nozzles of its Saturn AL-41F1S turbofans can independently point in different directions in flight to assist the aircraft in rolling and yawing. Only one operational Western fighter, the F-22 Raptor, has similar technology.

This also allows the Su-35 to achieve very high angles-of-attack—in other words, the plane can be moving in one direction while its nose is pointed in another. A high angle of attack allows an aircraft to more easily train its weapons on an evading target and execute tight maneuvers.

Such maneuvers may be useful for evading missiles or dogfighting at close ranges—though they leave any aircraft in a low-energy state.

The Flanker-E can achieve a maximum speed of Mach 2.25 at high altitude (equal to the F-22 and faster than the F-35 or F-16) and has excellent acceleration. However, contrary to initial reports, it appears it may not be able to supercruise—perform sustained supersonic flight without using afterburners—while loaded for combat. Its service ceiling is sixty thousand feet, on par with F-15s and F-22s, and ten thousand feet higher than Super Hornets, Rafales and F-35s.

The Su-35 has expanded fuel capacity, giving it a range of 2,200 miles on internal fuel, or 2,800 miles with two external fuel tanks. Both the lighter titanium airframe and the engines have significantly longer life expectancies than their predecessors, at six thousand and 4,500 flight hours, respectively. (For comparison, the F-22 and F-35 are rated at eight thousand hours).

The Flanker airframe is not particularly stealthy. However, adjustments to the engine inlets and canopy, and the use of radar-absorbent material, supposedly halve the Su-35’s radar cross-section; one article claims it may be down to between one and three meters. This could reduce the range it can be detected and targeted, but the Su-35 is still not a “stealth fighter.”

Weaponry

The Su-35 has twelve to fourteen weapons hardpoints, giving it an excellent loadout compared to the eight hardpoints on the F-15C and F-22, or the four internally stowed missiles on the F-35.

At long range, the Su-35 can use K-77M radar-guided missiles (known by NATO as the AA-12 Adder), which are claimed to have range of over 120 miles.

For shorter-range engagements, the R-74 (NATO designation: AA-11 Archer) infrared-guided missile is capable of targeting “off boresight”—simply by looking through a helmet-mounted optical sight, the pilot can target an enemy plane up sixty degrees away from where his plane is pointed. The R-74 has a range of over twenty-five miles, and also uses thrust-vectoring technology.

The medium-range R-27 missile and the extra long-range R-37 (aka the AA-13 Arrow, for use against AWACs, EW and tanker aircraft) complete the Su-35’s air-to-air missile selection.

Additionally, the Su-35 is armed with a thirty-millimeter cannon with 150 rounds for strafing or dogfighting.

The Flanker-E can also carry up to seventeen thousand pounds of air-to-ground munitions. Historically, Russia has made only limited use of precision-guided munitions (PGMs) compared to Western air forces. However, the capability for large-scale use of such weapons is there, if doctrine and munition stocks accommodate it.

Sensors and Avionics

The Su-35’s most critical improvements over its predecessors may be in hardware. It is equipped with a powerful L175M Khibiny electronic countermeasure system intended to distort radar waves and misdirect hostile missiles. This could significantly degrade attempts to target and hit the Flanker-E.

The Su-35’s IRBIS-E passive electronically scanned array (PESA) radar is hoped to provide better performance against stealth aircraft. It is claimed to able to track up to thirty airborne targets with a Radar-cross section of three meters up to 250 miles away—and targets with cross-sections as small 0.1 meters over fifty miles away. However, PESA radars are easier to detect and to jam than the Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars now used by Western fighters. The IRBIS also has an air-to ground mode that can designate up to four surface targets at time for PGMs.

Supplementing the radar is an OLS-35 targeting system that includes an Infra-Red Search and Track (IRST) system said to have a fifty-mile range—potentially a significant threat to stealth fighters.

More mundane but vital systems—such as pilot multi-function displays and fly-by-wire avionics—have also been significantly updated.

Operational Units and Future Customers

Currently, the Russian Air Force operates only forty-eight Su-35s. Another fifty were ordered in January 2016, and will be produced at a rate of ten per year. Four Su-35s were deployed to Syria this January after a Russian Su-24 was shot down by a Turkish F-16. Prominently armed with air-to-air missiles, the Su-35s were intended to send a message that the Russians could pose an aerial threat if attacked.

China has ordered twenty-four Su-35s at a cost of $2 billion, but is thought unlikely to purchase more. Beijing’s interest is believed to lie mostly in copying the Su-35’s thrust-vector engines for use in its own designs. The Chinese PLAAF already operates the Shenyang J-11, a copy of the Su-27.

Attempts to market the Su-35 abroad, especially to India and Brazil, have mostly foundered. Recently, however, Indonesia has indicated it wishes to purchase eight this year, though the contract signing has been repeatedly delayed. Algeria is reportedly considering acquiring ten for $900 million. Egypt, Venezuela and Vietnam are also potential customers.

Cost estimates for the Su-35 have run between $40 million and $65 million; however, the exports contracts have been at prices above $80 million per unit.

Against the Fifth Generation

The Su-35 is at least equal—if not superior—to the very best Western fourth-generation fighters. The big question, is how well can it perform against a fifth-generation stealth plane such as the F-22 or F-35?

The maneuverability of the Su-35 makes it an unsurpassed dogfighter. However, future aerial clashes using the latest missiles (R-77s, Meteors, AIM-120s) could potentially take place over enormous ranges, while even short-range combat may involve all-aspect missiles like the AIM-9X and R-74 that don’t require pointing the aircraft at the target. Nonetheless, the Su-35’s speed (which contributes to a missile’s velocity) and large load-carrying abilities mean it can hold its own in beyond-visual-range combat. Meanwhile, the Flanker-E’s agility and electronic countermeasures may help it evade opposing missiles.

The more serious issue, though, is that we don’t know how effective stealth technology will be against a high-tech opponent. An F-35 stealth fighter that gets in a short-range duel with a Flanker-E will be in big trouble—but how good a chance does the faster, more-maneuverable Russian fighter have of detecting that F-35 and getting close to it in the first place?

As the U.S. Air Force would have it, stealth fighters will be able to unleash a hail of missiles up to one hundred miles away without the enemy having any way to return fire until they close to a (short) distance, where visual and IR scanning come into play. Proponents of the Russian fighter argue that it will be able to rely upon ground-based low-bandwidth radars, and on-board IRST sensors and PESA radar, to detect stealth planes. Keep in mind, however, that the former two technologies are imprecise and can’t be used to target weapons in most cases.

Both parties obviously have huge economic and political incentives to advance their claims. While it is worthwhile examining the technical merits of these schools of thought in detail, the question will likely only be resolved by testing under combat conditions. Furthermore, other factors such as supporting assets, mission profile, pilot training and numbers play a large a role in determining the outcomes of aerial engagements.

The Su-35 may be the best jet-age dogfighter ever made and a capable missile delivery platform—but whether that will suffice for an air-superiority fighter in the era of stealth technology remains to be seen.

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 2016.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

James Holmes

Putin, Eurasia

Putin plays a weak hand well—and gleefully.

Here's What You Need To Remember: It’s hard for even a casual observer of Russian president Vladimir Putin to escape the impression that he’s having a blast. He takes delight in causing trouble for the West, even apart from sober concerns such as fulfilling national interests, warding off threats, or repairing wounded national honor. Politicians who find the game of statecraft fun enjoy an edge over those who feel burdened by it.

Winston Churchill’s truism that Russia is “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” remains as acute as it was when he articulated it during an October 1939 BBC radio address. It verges on impossible to forecast what Moscow will do tactically. What it will do strategically, however, is more intelligible and thus more predictable.

Perhaps, added the future prime minister, “there is a key” to the riddle—namely “Russian national interest.” Seeing Nazi Germany overrun southeastern Europe or the Black Sea basin “would be contrary to the historic life-interests of Russia.” He delicately avoided mentioning that the Soviet Union and Germany were fresh off conquering and partitioning Poland under a secret pact, doing so the month before Churchill took to the airwaves. Had he included the invasion in his catalog of Russian interests, he would have seen that it made perfect sense to Soviet leaders to seek a strategic buffer in Poland. It advanced the national interest as the Soviets reckoned it.

Anyway, it’s worth asking how Moscow interprets Russia’s historic life-interests eighty years hence. What do Russians want today?

It’s a question that’s ripped from the headlines yet feels like a throwback. In recent years, Russian warplanes have resumed their Cold War practice of buzzing American ships or aircraft that venture into any sea or airspace that Moscow considers a Russian preserve. The Black Sea has been a favorite arena for mock combat, as Churchill might have prophesied judging from his BBC address. U.S. Navy destroyers cruising there have repeatedly filmed Russian planes making close, unsafe passes. The crew of USS Donald Cook must have felt singled out: the ship endured harassment in both the Black Sea and Baltic Sea.

But Russian aviators seem to have taken routine probing of United States and allied air defenses uptempo since the coronavirus swept the globe. Twice in recent weeks, for example, Russian aircraft have passed within twenty-five feet of U.S. Navy P-8 surveillance planes over the Mediterranean Sea. Twenty-five feet is a hair’s breadth in aviation terms, as a Chinese fighter jock found out in 2001 after colliding with a U.S. EP-3 surveillance plane over the South China Sea and plunging to his doom. A longstanding agreement between Washington and Moscow proscribes such hotdogging for fear it will provoke an armed clash.

Nor do close-quarters encounters exhaust the spicy news out of the Russian military. For example, the New York Times carried an intriguing story about the ultra-deep-diving submarine Losharik, which suffered a fire sixty miles off the Norwegian coast last year. Fourteen Russian sailors perished in the blaze, which seems to have ignited in the nuclear-powered boat’s battery compartment. There’s far more to the story than human drama, though. The New York Times notes that Losharik is far from your ordinary submarine. Naval historian extraordinaire Norman Polmar estimates that the boat can dive to a maximum depth somewhere in the neighborhood from eighty-two hundred to twenty thousand feet.

No manned sub in the U.S. Navy inventory approaches even Polmar’s lower figure. Americans deploy unmanned underwater vehicles when they want to plumb the oceans’ deepest recesses. Losharik’s hull is evidently built around a series of titanium spheres housing the control room, living spaces, and machinery spaces. Spheres are strong when made of stout materials. Hence the boat can voyage to the bottom of the sea without being crushed by extreme pressure. Why bother building such a craft? Well, the official account out of Moscow depicted its mission as scientific in nature. That Losharik was undertaking research when it caught fire is plausible, true or not. Humanity has much to learn about the underwater realm.

But Losharik’s ability to prowl the seafloor gives the Kremlin less benign options as well. Options like cutting transoceanic cables that provide internet connectivity, connect up the world’s financial institutions, and on and on. Severing an antagonist’s communications is a time-honored opening move in the war. Great Britain cut the telegraph cables connecting imperial Germany to the world at the outset of the Great War a century ago. Information and disinformation warfare is a field of combat Moscow likes to bestride. Losharik supplies a weapon for waging it.

Losharik’s crew could also attack Western anti-submarine sensors strewn across the seabed in the Greenland-Iceland-U.K. gap and other narrow passages. Puncturing Western navies’ monitoring capability would clear a transit corridor for Russian Navy boats into the North Atlantic high seas or other operating grounds, where detecting, tracking, and assailing them is far harder than in confined quarters. In short, the Losharik disaster shines a spotlight on yet another Russian implement for making mischief at Western expense.

All is not rosy for Moscow, though. The Russian armed forces—like all armed forces—have to live within their means. Russia depends heavily on exporting oil and natural gas, so low energy prices constrict its national income and thus its ability to afford pricey armaments. Prices have been low for some time and have run off a cliff amid coronavirus lockdowns. Just this week, for instance, the news broke that the Severnoye Design Bureau, a division of the United Shipbuilding Corporation, has halted the development of a nuclear-powered destroyer and a bulked-up variant of the Russian Navy’s Admiral Gorshkov-class frigate. Summarily canceling two marquee projects can’t be good tidings for Russian sea power.

In fact, Russian weapons acquisitions invert the pattern from the Cold War, when the Soviet military was vast in numbers but backward in technology. Quantity, believed Soviet chieftains, boasted a quality all its own. Modern-day Russia prefers to invest in small numbers of high-quality armaments at the expense of quantity. Whether Russian mariners, aviators, and soldiers can compensate for the resulting shortfall in mass remains in doubt. Quantity isn’t everything. But if the lynchpin of strategy is to deliver more combat power than the foe at the scene of combat at the decisive time, a few impressive platforms may not suffice. Quantity still matters.

So much for the roundup of Russian defense news. How to make sense of Russian motives underlying the news? Well, two millennia ago Thucydides posited that fear, honor, and interest represent three prime movers impelling human actions. Start with the Russian national interest, as Churchill did in 1939. Peacetime military strategy is an armed conversation with opponents, allies and friends, and prospective allies and friends. The conversation is about relative power and weakness. Not just pugilists but spectators decide the outcomes of peacetime confrontations between armed forces. Whoever most observers believe would have won in wartime tends to come out ahead in peacetime. Shaping perceptions, then, is armed conversationalists’ goal.

General George S. Patton explained the logic in his famous address to the Third Army: people flock to a winner and scorn a loser. Buzzing ships or warplanes might cow U.S. crews over time, rendering them risk-averse. That’s one audience for Russian antics. But the Kremlin’s true aim is to project an image of power and resolve, molding perceptions in capitals that matter. Shaking confidence in U.S. military might dishearten political leaders and ordinary citizens in countries where Moscow covets influence—NATO members, former Soviet republics, and former Eastern Bloc states in particular. If U.S. allies and friends come to disbelieve in their superpower protector, they will prove increasingly pliant when Russia demands something. Patton would instantly grasp the reasoning behind Russia’s playground hijinks. They could help the Kremlin get its way.

Fear blends with the Russian thirst for honor. During the 1990s Moscow watched as the West intruded into the former Soviet space and, in some cases, made allies out of former Soviet republics or Warsaw Pact clients. NATO waged war in the Balkans, a region Russians have long regarded as a sphere of interest, etc. Events fanned Russia’s ingrained paranoia about Western martial endeavors around its periphery, and there was little Moscow could do about them during that chaotic phase in Russian history. It only seems natural for Moscow to reassert itself in its near abroad now that it sports the wherewithal to do so.

So warlike one-upmanship helps Russia burnish its image as a virile political and military force after the traumatic 1990s. It holds fear at bay while earning new respect. Or as Thucydides might put it, provoking small-scale armed encounters in which U.S. forces remain passive slakes Moscow’s thirst for honor. Fear, honor, interest; primal motives drive moderns the way they drove the ancients. But don’t rule out other motives, either. Thucydides doesn’t claim that fear, honor, and interest are the only motives that animate human beings, just three of the strongest. There are others.

Such as merriment. It’s hard for even a casual observer of Russian president Vladimir Putin to escape the impression that he’s having a blast. He takes delight in causing trouble for the West, even apart from sober concerns such as fulfilling national interests, warding off threats, or repairing wounded national honor. Politicians who find the game of statecraft fun enjoy an edge over those who feel burdened by it. Putin plays a weak hand well—and gleefully.

Winston Churchill was right about Russia during World War II when national survival was at stake. Back then fending off military menaces came before all else. And the Russian national interest remains a good way to decipher Russian actions. Applied to Putin’s Russia, though, Churchill’s diagnosis is incomplete. Russia is less an enigma than a product of its unique history combined with basic human passions that endure from age to age. These forces shape politics and strategy in Moscow.

Let’s interpret the daily news that way. 

This article was re-published due to reader interest and timeliness.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific. The views voiced here are his alone. This article first appeared last year.

Image: Reuters

Sebastien Roblin

History, Asia

In 1950, the PLA launched a series of amphibious operations, most notably resulting in the capture of Hainan island in the South China Sea. However, a landing in Kinmen was bloodily repulsed by Nationalist tanks in the Battle of Guningtou, barring the way for a final assault on Taiwan itself.

Here's What You Need to Know: In the event of military conflict, most believe China would use the modern equivalent of the tactics used at Yijiangshan: a massive bombardment by long-range missile batteries and airpower well before any PLA troops hit the shore. We should all hope that scenario remains strictly theoretical.

In 1955, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army embarked on a bloody amphibious landing to capture a fortified Nationalist island, only about twice the size of a typical golf course. Not only did the battle exhibit China’s growing naval capabilities, it was a pivotal moment in a chain of events that led Eisenhower to threaten a nuclear attack on China—and led Congress to pledge itself to the defense of Taiwan.

In 1949, Mao’s People’s Liberation Army succeeded in sweeping the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) government out of mainland China. However, the Nationalist navy allowed the KMT to maintain its hold on large islands such as Hainan and Formosa, as well as smaller islands only miles away from major mainland cities such as Kinmen and Matsu. These soon were heavily fortified with Nationalist troops and guns, and engaged in protracted artillery duels with PLA guns on the mainland.

In 1950, the PLA launched a series of amphibious operations, most notably resulting in the capture of Hainan island in the South China Sea. However, a landing in Kinmen was bloodily repulsed by Nationalist tanks in the Battle of Guningtou, barring the way for a final assault on Taiwan itself. Then events intervened, as the outbreak of the Korean War caused President Truman to deploy the U.S. Seventh Fleet to defend Taiwan. However, the naval blockade cut both ways—Truman did not allow Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek to launch attacks on mainland China.

This policy changed with the presidency of Eisenhower in 1953, who withdrew the Seventh Fleet, allowing the Nationalists to build up troops on the forward islands and launch more guerilla raids on the mainland. However, the PLA was able to counter-escalate with new World War II surplus heavy artillery, warships and aircraft it had acquired from Russia. The series of artillery duels, naval battles and aerial bombardments that followed became known as the First Taiwan Strait Crisis.

On November 14, four PLA Navy torpedo boats laid a nighttime ambush for the KMT destroyer Tai-ping (formerly the USS Decker) which had been detected by shore-based radar. An ill-advised light onboard the destroyer gave the PLAN boats a target, and the 1,400-ton ship was struck by a torpedo and sank before it could be towed to safety. Later, Il-10 Sturmovik bombers of the PLA Naval Air Force hit Dachen Harbor, sinking the Landing Ship (Tank) Zhongquan. These episodes highlighted that the Nationalists could no longer rest assured of control of the sea, making maritime lines of supply to the more forward island garrisons progressively less secure.

While the PLA unleashed heavy artillery bombardments on the well-defended Kinmen Island east of the city of Xiamen, it more immediately planned on securing the Dachen Archipelago close to Taizhou in Zhejiang Province. However, the Yijiangshan Islands, a little further than ten miles off the Chinese coast, stood in the way. The two islands measured only two-thirds of a square mile together, but were garrisoned by over one thousand Nationalist troops from the Second and Fourth Assault Groups and the Fourth Assault Squadron, with over one hundred machine gun positions, as well as sixty guns in the Fourth Artillery Brigade. The garrison’s commander, Wang Shen-ming, had been awarded additional honors by Chiang Kai-shek before being dispatched to the post, to signal the importance placed on the island outpost.

On December 16, 1955, PLA Gen. Zhang Aiping persuaded Beijing that he could launch a successful amphibious landing on the island on January 18. However, the planning process did not go smoothly: Zhang had to overcome last minute jitters from Beijing on the seventeenth questioning his force’s readiness for the operation. Furthermore, Zhang’s staff rejected a night assault landing, proposed by Soviet naval advisor S. F. Antonov, causing the latter to storm out the headquarters. Zhang instead planned the assault “Chinese-style”—which meant deploying overwhelming firepower and numbers in a daytime attack.

At 8:00 a.m. on December 18, fifty-four Il-10 attack planes and Tu-2 twin-engine bombers, escorted by eighteen La-11 fighters, struck the headquarters and artillery positions of the KMT garrison. These were just the first wave of a six-hour aerial bombardment that involved 184 aircraft, unleashing over 254,000 pounds of bombs.

Meanwhile, four battalions of heavy artillery and coastal guns at nearby Toumenshan rained over forty-one thousand shells on the tiny island, totaling more than a million pounds of ordnance.

The amphibious assault finally commenced after 2:00 p.m., embarking three thousand troops of the 178th Infantry Regiment, and one battalion of the 180th. The fleet numbered 140 landing ships and transports, escorted by four frigates, two gunboats and six rocket artillery ships. These latter vessels began pounding the island with direct fire, joined by troops of the 180th regiment, who tied their infantry guns onto the decks of small boats to contribute to the barrage. By this time, most of the Nationalist guns on Yijiangshan Island had been silenced, though artillery still sank one PLAN landing ship, damaged twenty-one others and wounded or killed more than one hundred sailors.

Troops of the 180th Regiment hit the southern beach at 2:30 p.m., shortly followed by a battalion of the 178th to the north—the landing zones totaling no more than one thousand meters across. Withering machine-gun fire from two intact machine-gun nests inflicted hundreds of casualties on the invaders, until low-flying bombers and naval gunfire suppressed the defenders. Shortly after 3:00 p.m., the assault troops broke through to capture the strongpoint at Hill 93, by which time they had been joined by two more battalions from the 178th.

As the defenses were overwhelmed, Nationalist troops fell back into a network of underground facilities. PLA troops began clearing the fortified bunkers, caves and tunnels with flamethrowers and recoilless guns, suffocating and burning many of the defenders. Nationalist troops on Dachen island received a final message from garrison commander Wang Shen-ming in redoubt in Hill 121, reporting that PLA troops were only fifty yards away. Shortly afterward, he committed suicide by hand grenade.

By 5:30 p.m., Yijiangshan island was declared secure. Zhang Aiping quickly moved his HQ over to the island, and scrambled to organize his troops into defensive positions to repel an anticipated Nationalist counterattack from the Dachen Islands that never materialized. Some accounts claim that his force may have suffered friendly-fire casualties from PLAAF bombers during this time.

The invasion had cost the PLA 1,529 casualties in all, including 416 dead. In return, the PLA claimed the Nationalist garrison had suffered 567 dead and had the remaining 519 taken prisoner, while the Republic of China maintains the true total is 712 soldiers dead, twelve nurses, and around 130 captured, of which only around a dozen would return in the 1990s. The last stand of the garrison is commemorated today with a number of memorials in Taiwan.

The seizure of Yijiangshan was immediately followed on January 19 by the commencement of a PLA campaign on the Dachen Archipelago, again spearheaded by intense aerial and artillery bombardments. One air raid succeeded in knocking out the main island’s water reservoir and encrypted radio communications system, and the United States advised the Republic of China that the islands were militarily untenable. On February 5, over 132 ships of the United States Seventh Fleet, covered by four hundred combat aircraft, evacuated 14,500 civilians and fourteen thousand Nationalist troops and guerillas from the archipelago, bringing an end to the Republic of China’s presence in Zhejiang Province.

Before that, just eleven days after the fall of Yijiangshan, the U.S. Congress passed the Formosa Resolution, pledging to defend the Republic of China from further attack. Then, in March, the United States warned that it was considering using nuclear weapons to defend the Nationalist government. Just a month later, Mao’s government signaled it was ready to negotiate, and bombardment of Nationalist islands ceased in May.

Whether Eisenhower’s nuclear brinkmanship was what led to the ending of hostilities, however, is much debated. Hostilities would reignite three years later in the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, where the U.S. provision of Sidewinder air-to-air missiles and heavy artillery helped secure a favorable outcome for the Nationalists.

Gen. Zhang Aiping, the invasion force’s commander, would go on to serve in high posts in the Chinese military, including a stint Minister of Defense in 1983–88. However, he would encounter political troubles along the way: his leg was broken during the Cultural Revolution when he fell into disfavor with Mao. Later, in 1989, he signed a letter opposing the military crackdown on the protesters in Tiananmen Square.

The United States remains legally committed to the defense of Taiwan, even though it no longer recognizes it as the government of China. Despite a recent spike in tensions, China-Taiwan relations are still massively improved, exchanging university students and business investments rather than artillery shells and aerial bombs. However, the capabilities of the PLA have drastically increased in the interval as well.

In the event of military conflict, most believe China would use the modern equivalent of the tactics used at Yijiangshan: a massive bombardment by long-range missile batteries and airpower well before any PLA troops hit the shore. We should all hope that scenario remains strictly theoretical.

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 2017.

Image: Reuters.

Sebastien Roblin

Pakistan, F-16, South Asia

Pakistan’s F-16s have been no stranger to controversy for nearly four decades.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Today, Pakistan operates around sixty-six F-16A/Bs and nineteen F-16C/Ds in four active squadrons, including No. 9 Griffins multi-role squadron in Sargodha, the No. 19 Sherdills training and air defense squadron at Thatta, and the No. 11 Arrows multi-role squadron based at Shahbaz near Jacobabad. The last base also hosts No. 5 Falcons multi-role squadron, the only F-16C/D unit.

During an aerial skirmish on February 27, 2019, an Indian Air Force MiG-21 Bison was shot down by a radar-guided missile. The Pakistani Air Force (PAF) claims the kill was scored by a JF-17 Thunder, a domestically-built fighter built with Chinese assistance.

However, India subsequently revealed fragments of an AIM-120C-5 missile—a U.S.-built weapon only compatible with the American-built F-16s in PAF service. Pakistan has incentives to deny the use of F-16s, as secret end-user agreements may restrict the aircraft’s use against India—despite that being an obvious application of the venerable fourth-generation jet. India, meanwhile, claims the MiG-21’s pilot managed to shoot down an F-16.

Air Cover for the Mujahideen

Pakistan’s F-16s have been no stranger to controversy for nearly four decades.

In response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Islamabad and Washington collaborated to train, organize and arm mujahideen resistance fighters in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. In retaliation, Afghan and Soviet warplanes began bombing the camps—and the PAF’s Chinese-made J-6 jets proved too slow to catch them.

Thus in 1981, Pakistan convinced the United States to sell it F-16 Fighting Falcon single-engine multi-role fighters—a then cutting-edge yet inexpensive-to-operate design with fly-by-wire controls affording it extraordinary maneuverability. The agile Falcon could attain speeds as high as Mach 2 and lug heavy weapons loads, though it did have a limited combat radius (around 350 miles) and early production models lacked beyond-visual-range missiles.

Between October 1982 and 1986, a total of twenty-eight F-16As and twelve two-seat F-16Bs were delivered to Pakistan via Saudi Arabia in Operations Peace Gate I and II. These outfitted the PAF’s No. 9, 11 and 14 Squadrons which flew patrols along the Afghan border, typically carrying two advanced AIM-9L and two cheaper AIMP-9P-4 Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles.

Unlike earlier heat-seekers which could lock on to the hot tail-pipe at the rear of an aircraft, the AIM-9L “Lima” Sidewinders could engage from any angle. The AIM-9L’s ability to hit opponents in a head-on-pass would soon prove particularly effective.

Between 1986 and 1990, the PAF credited th F-16 with shooting down ten Afghan and Soviet jets, helicopters and transport planes, with many additional claims unconfirmed. Soviet and Afghan records definitively confirm only six losses: four Su-22s supersonic fighter-bombers, one Su-25 “flying tank” piloted by future Russian vice president Alexander Rutskoy, and one An-26 cargo plane.

The PAF lost a single F-16, apparently struck by a missile fired by its own wingman. The F-16 patrols reportedly deterred more extensive bombardment of refugee camps on Pakistani soil, and disrupted Soviet efforts to resupply isolated outposts.

The Nuclear F-16 Controversy

By 1990 Pakistan had already placed Peace Gate III and IV orders for seventy-one improved F-16A/B Block 15s. But in October 1990, Pakistan’s nuclear research program led the United States to impose sanctions. Thus, twenty-eight newly-built F-16s for which Pakistan had already paid $23 million apiece were consigned to the desert Boneyard facility in Arizona, where they remained for over a decade.

In the late 1990s, the Clinton administration offered to deliver the jets in return for Pakistan refraining from nuclear tests—but such was not to be. On May 28, 1998 Pakistan detonated five underground nuclear devices in response to an Indian nuclear test. It became evident that the heavy-lifting F-16s would serve as one of Pakistan’s primary nuclear-weapon delivery systems, and intelligence reports indicated that No. 9 and No. 11 squadron F-16s were modified to deliver nuclear gravity bombs on their center pylons.

A year later the two nuclear powers engaged in a limited war when Pakistani commandos infiltrated the mountainous Kargil region of India. As Indian Mirage 2000s pounded the infiltrators while escorted by MiG-29s, F-16s flew combat air patrols along the Pakistani side of the Line of Control reportedly painting the Indian jets with their targeting radars—and vice-versa—in an effort to intimidate.

However, neither air arm was authorized to engage the other, so no air battles occurred. Nonetheless, three years later a PAF F-16B shot down an Indian Searcher II drone that had penetrated deep into Pakistani airspace.

Pakistan Finally Gets More Falcons

Following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the United States intervened against the Taliban—a fundamentalist faction Pakistani intelligence agencies had cultivated to assert Islamabad’s influence in its war-torn neighbor. Seeking to wheedle half-hearted cooperation from Pakistan, in 2006 the Bush administration finally authorized the “Peace Drive” deal (“Peace Gate” having become poisonous brand) in which the United States handed over twenty-three remaining Peace Gate F-16As and Bs, and sold nineteen far more capable F-16Cs and D Block 52s.

The $5.1 billion deal also involved modernizing Pakistan’s by-then dated F-16A and Bs with the F-16AM/BM “Mid-Life Update.” This involved stripping down and repairing the aging air frames, replacing hundreds of wiring harnesses, exchanging old monochrome cockpit displays with color multi-function displays, and installing wide-angle HUDs and a new modular, digital flight computers which added support for laser and GPS-guided bombs.

Furthermore, an improved APG-66V2 doppler radar allowed the F-16AMs to employ beyond-visual-range AIM-120C-5 air-to-air missiles with a maximum range of sixty-five miles. 600 of the radar-guided fire-and-forget missiles were also sold. Pakistan also acquired DB-110 electro-optical reconnaissance pods capable of scanning 10,000 miles of terrain per hour.

As the Taliban forces expanded across Pakistan’s Swat Valley and Waziristan province, the Pakistani military finally counterattacked in 2009. PAF F-16s flew hundreds of combat missions through 2011, first using DB-110 pods to identify camouflaged Taliban positions, then destroying them with laser-guided 500 and 2,000-pound bombs.

Islamabad’s thirst for the agile jets was not yet sated. In 2013, it purchased nine more F-16As and four F-16Bs directly from Jordan.

Today, Pakistan operates around sixty-six F-16A/Bs and nineteen F-16C/Ds in four active squadrons, including No. 9 Griffins multi-role squadron in Sargodha, the No. 19 Sherdills training and air defense squadron at Thatta, and the No. 11 Arrows multi-role squadron based at Shahbaz near Jacobabad. The last base also hosts No. 5 Falcons multi-role squadron, the only F-16C/D unit.

Besides the F-16A downed by friendly fire, Pakistan has lost six F-16As and two F-16Bs in accidents. In addition to bird strikes, engine failures, and pilot disorientation, one F-16B was consumed by fire after a collision with a wild boar during takeoff caused the nose gear to collapse!

India’s recovery of AIM-120C-5 missile fragments after the air battle on February 27 provides convincing evidence that Pakistani F-16s scored their first kill since 1990. However, India also claims an F-16 was downed by a MiG-21 using an R-73 missile. The PAF denies the claim, though its candor about F-16 involvement is suspect, while Indian media has also circulated demonstrably false “proof of an F-16 loss. The only evidence of an F-16 loss was a Pakistani ground observer who claimed seeing two jets, not one, shot down.

The mere possibility that a Falcon was downed by a 1950s-era MiG-21 should not be over-interpreted. India’s MiG-21 Bisons, though outdated, feature upgraded radars, data-links, self-defense jammers, and agile heat-seeking R-73 missiles targeted with a helmet-mounted sight. The airframe has always had a smallish radar cross-section, is Mach 2 capable, and performed well in exercises against U.S. F-15s and F-16s!

While an F-16 is superior in many respects, particularly situational awareness, an R-73-armed MiG-21 that managed to close within visual range (as ostensibly occurred) would still pose a formidable threat.

In any case, the recent aerial skirmish highlights the important capabilities F-16s continue to provide Pakistan’s military, and the continuing tensions that may evoke as Pakistan aligns itself more with China, and the United States with India. Ironically, just days before the recent skirmish, F-16 manufacturer Lockheed launched a new pitch to move F-16 production to India for a heavily modernized spinoff dubbed the F-21.

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 several years ago.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Sebastien Roblin

F-15EX,

Very Long-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (VLRAAM) have two or three times the range of more typical beyond-visual range missiles like the AIM-120, Russian R-77, and Chinese PL-12. VLRAAMs are aimed less at shooting down fighters, and more at severing the vulnerable tendons they depend upon: tanker, surveillance, and command-and-control planes.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The budget document strongly suggests the Air Force is looking to field a broader range of air-warfare capabilities than before, particularly with an eye to matching foreign technology as well as finding ways to keep its non-stealth jets in the fight without exposing them to undue risk.

For a while now China and Russia have developed and deployed very-long-range radar-guided air-to-air missiles (or VLRAAMs) designed to threaten aircraft up to 250 miles away.

By contrast, the U.S. Air Force has focused on refining its short-range heat-seeking AIM-9X Sidewinder and medium-to-long range AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAM). The service didn’t see a need for ultra-long-range missiles when it had F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters that could maneuver into position with low odds of detection.

However, that thinking has changed more recently. First in 2017, the Air Force and Navy began developing a successor to the roughly 100-mile-range AIM-120D called the AIM-260 Joint Air Tactical Missile. This Lockheed-built missile reportedly retains the single-pulse rocket propulsion and form factor of the AIM-120 (meaning it can fit inside existing stealth fighters) while achieving greater range—presumably exceeding 124 miles. Flight tests for the AIM-260 are set to begin in 2021, and it will replace the AIM-120 in production by 2026.

But more radically, budget documents seen by John Tirpak of Air Force Magazine in April 2021 reveal the service plans to mount “oversized air-to-air [weapons]” on its forthcoming fleet of F-15EX Eagle II fighters.

This may refer to a Raytheon-led concept program begun in 2016 called the Long Range Engagement Weapon (LREW), though admittedly concept art for LREW depicted the weapon being fired from an F-22 Raptor.

The new missile referred to in the budget document seems by definition too large to fit inside existing stealth fighters. Indeed, it may hint at an evolving air warfare doctrine designed to allow non-stealth F-15EX jets to contribute long-range missile shots to an air battle while mitigating their vulnerability to return fire, which may be of growing concern to the Air Force.

The Very Long Range Air-to-Air Missile

Very Long-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (VLRAAM) have two or three times the range of more typical beyond-visual range missiles like the AIM-120, Russian R-77, and Chinese PL-12. VLRAAMs are aimed less at shooting down fighters, and more at severing the vulnerable tendons they depend upon: tanker, surveillance, and command-and-control planes.

Tankers are indispensable for long-range operations in theaters such as the Pacific Ocean, while airborne early warning aircraft and similar command-and control planes give a huge edge to fighter pilots by dramatically improving situational awareness and coordination.

These airliner-based support planes hang well back from enemy air defenses—but VLRAAMs give potential adversary fighters a “sniper shot” of sorts at these vulnerable aircraft without having to fight their way through the intervening U.S. fighter screen.

Russian notably is deploying an improved Vympel R-37M (NATO codename AA-13B Axehead), on MiG-31 Foxhound interceptors, complementing the R-33 missile deployed to shoot down U.S. strategic bombers and spy planes. The improved R-37M can achieve hypersonic speeds (up to Mach 6) and has a maximum range of around 250 miles, while the R-33 meanwhile has had its ranged extended to around 190 miles. Both can be fitted with nuclear anti-aircraft warheads.

Meanwhile, China’s PL-15 BVR missile uses a dual pulse solid fuel rocket motor to achieve an alleged maximum range of 186 miles, significantly outranging the U.S. AIM-120D. At least four PL-15s can fit in the internal bay of Beijing’s J-20 stealth fighter.

China also is developing a PL-21 missile with an estimated 250-mile range similar to the R-37M. The PL-21 is believed to use the throttleable ramjet propulsion featured in the European Meteor BVR missile. That means instead of attaining peak velocity shortly after launch, it can efficiently cruise towards a target before accelerating to hypersonic speeds in the terminal phase to increase the odds of a kill.

Enabling the F-15EX?

It’s possible the Air Force would use an oversized air-to-air missile in a similar manner to China and Russia. However China and Russia operate fewer support planes while ground-based radars and facilities are often more central to their operations.

The Navy might alternately see a role for such missiles on its F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter as a successor to the retired AIM-54 Phoenix missile and F-14 Tomcat interceptor. The Phoenix’s long range and high speed was premised on the need to engage Soviet bombers as rapidly as possible to prevent them from releasing deadly anti-ship missile salvos. This threat has reemerged to a degree in the twenty-first century in the form of China’s diverse maritime strike capabilities and Russia’s still active anti-ship capable strategic bombers.

However, the Air Force budget document seemingly portrays VLRAAMs as a way to integrate its fleet of non-stealth F-15EX fighters into offensive air superiority missions alongside its F-22 and F-35 stealth aircraft. The service is procuring at least seventy-eight, and potentially up to 200 multi-role Boeing F-15EX jets to replace F-15C air-superiority fighters. However, a recent wargame suggests the Air Force believes its F-15EX aircraft could suffer substantial losses if pitted in a head-on fight against contemporary adversaries.

However, the stealthy F-22 and F-35 fighters can only carry four to six beyond-visual-range air-to-air missiles in their internal bays. By contrast, the F-15EX has long been extolled as a “missile truck” theoretically able to carry as many as twenty medium-sized missiles, or a few very large weapons like the hypersonic AGM-183A Arrow air-to-ground missile.

Theoretically, F-15EXs armed with VLRAAMs could maintain a safe distance from enemy fighters while receiving targeting data from F-22 and F-35 stealth jets operating at closer distances. Admittedly, F-15s might still be visible on radar at that range and be subject to long-range shots in return, but unlike a lumbering support plane, they possess the speed and maneuverability to evade at that distance.

An alternate tactic might be for F-15EXs to release VLRAAMs towards an anticipated battlespace without being locked onto targets. If equipped with a throttleable ramjet, the missiles could cruise stealthily and fuel-efficiently towards the engagement area until they receive targeting data from friendly forces via two-way datalink. At that point they could throttle up in speed, reducing the time needed to complete the sensor-to-shooter kill chain.

Thomas Newdick points out in an article for The Drive that VLRAAMs might also be an attractive weapon for large non-fighter aircraft such as the Air Force’s forthcoming B-21 Raider stealth bomber that might need to deal with opposing aircraft without getting dangerously close.

Challenges to VLRAAM Use

That said, there are practical problems to leveraging the extreme range of VLRAAMs.

For one, their reach may meet or exceed the launch platform’s radar detection range. That means VLRAAMs may depend on target cuing by ground-based or airborne early warning radars, or by a friendly fighter closer to the target.

It could also prove difficult to verify whether the target is a genuine adversary rather than a friendly or civilian aircraft. Historically, rules of engagement requiring positive identification have significantly limited use of beyond-visual-range missiles. However, the kinds of high-intensity wars VLRAAMs would be used in likely would feature less stringent rules of engagement.

A final problem is that if a targeted aircraft’s missile approach warning systems (MAWS) works as intended, its pilot might have ample time to evade the missile. That means very-long-range missiles are unlikely to be effective against maneuverable fighters and primarily pose a threat to tankers, airborne radar planes, and subsonic bombers. That said, forcing an aircraft to stop whatever mission it's performing and take evasive maneuvers could itself have tactical benefits.

Regardless, the budget document strongly suggests the Air Force is looking to field a broader range of air-warfare capabilities than before, particularly with an eye to matching foreign technology as well as finding ways to keep its non-stealth jets in the fight without exposing them to undue risk.

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 is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Sebastien Roblin

Marines, Asia

The scars from World War II explain why post-war Japan—a nation consisting of 6,852 islands—has not had a dedicated amphibious force until 2018.

Here's What You Need to Know: Inevitably, some—particularly in China—will perceive Japan’s resurrected amphibious force as a harbinger of aggression. But realistically, Tokyo is simply developing a modest capability to respond to incursions on its many vulnerable islands.

Seventy-five years ago, the sight of 300 Japanese marines storming rolling onto a Queensland beach in hulking tracked amphibious vehicles would have heralded a catastrophic setback to Australia’s national security.

But obviously, the world has changed quite a bit since World War II. The soldiers from Japan’s Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade (ARB) were not invaders, but participants in the international 2019 Talisman Sabre exercise held biennially on Australian soil.

The scars from World War II, however, explain why post-war Japan—a nation consisting of 6,852 islands—has not had a dedicated amphibious force until 2018.

In the 1930s, the Imperial Japanese Navy began training Special Naval Landing Forces principally at naval bases in Kure, Maizuru, Sasebo and Yokosuka. Initially non-standard in organization, by 1941 there were sixteen battalion-sized SNLF regiments that would spearhead Japanese amphibious assaults in the Philippines, the Netherland East Indies, the American Aleutian Islands of Kiska and Attu, and New Guinea. 

Though the SNLF included some paratrooper and tank units, it was primarily a light infantry force, lacking the mechanized landing craft integral to U.S. Marine Corps. The force’s fearsome reputation was furthered in the massacres of surrendered enemies and by its tendency to fight to the last man in defensive actions such as the bloody battle of Tarawa in 1943.

After the war, Japanese leaders perceived amphibious warfare as fundamentally aggressive, and thus inappropriate for Japan’s self-defense forces and pacifistic constitution. When it came to conflicts over distant islands, the JSDF developed the concept of “Maritime Operational Transport”—rushing troops to those islands before the enemy forces arrived.

But tension between Tokyo and Beijing have intensified in the twenty-first century—most prominently over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands (the first name is Japanese, the latter Chinese), tiny specks of land over 200 miles away from both mainland China and major Japanese islands.

More ominously, some Chinese scholars have argued that the more populated Nansei/Ryukyu island belt in southwestern Japan—which includes the Okinawa prefecture and is the site of a major U.S. military base—also rightfully belongs to China.

Concerns that Beijing might seize outlying islands finally led in 2018 to the formation of the 2,100-man Amphibious Rapid Response Brigade (ARDB), based at Sasebo on Kyushu—formed under the ground force’s first unified command.

Though Sasebo once based naval SNLF units, the new brigade is formed from the Ground Self Defense Force’s Western Army Infantry Regiment, an elite 680-man light infantry battalion formed in 2002.

The ARDB now consist of two 800-man Amphibious Rapid Deployment Regiments, with a third currently being formed to boost the unit to 3,000 personnel. Support battalions include units specialized in artillery (with 120-millimeter RT mortars), reconnaissance (operating small inflatable boats), engineering and logistical support.

But the brigade’s key support unit is a Combat Landing Battalion comprising 58 hulking AAV-P7A1 amphibious armored vehicles that can swim marines from ship to shore at eight miles per hour. Resembling the Jawa Sand Crawler in Star Wars, the 32-ton “amtracs” can carry twenty-one troops each—two or three times more than most modern personnel carriers—and bristle with .50 caliber machine guns and grenade launchers. However, amtracs are thinly armored—U.S. Marines lost many in Iraq—and may struggle to negotiate the coral reefs surrounding most of Japan’s southwestern islands.

Japan is also procuring seventeen MV-22B Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft for air insertion on remote islands. The Osprey is expensive and its high accident rates have led to large scale protests by Japanese citizens. However, the type’s ability to combine the vertical takeoff and landing ability of a helicopter with the higher potential range and speed of an airplane are vital attributes given the over 600 miles separating the southwestern-most Japanese islands from Kyushu.

The MSDF chips in the third vital logistical element: three Osumi-class Landing Ship, tanks (LSTs) commissioned between 1998–2003. These 14,000-ton vessels be crammed full with up to a thousand troops, or ten large armored vehicles such as Type 16 Maneuver Combat Vehicles. An internal “well deck” allows each LST to launch two of Japan’s six Landing Craft Air Cushions (LCACs) to ferry troops ashore. Japan is working on modifying the Osumis to embark AAV-P7s and MV-22s.

The Japanese Navy also has around a dozen smaller LCMs (Landing Craft Mechanized), and two 540-ton utility landing craft (LCUs). The Ground Self Defense Force has proposed procuring its own landing ships tanks independent of the Maritime Self Defense Force, and has been window shopping for LST designs, though lacks funding.

The newly-minted brigade rapidly became visible in overseas exercise. On October 2018, fifty ARDB soldiers mounted in four amtracs participated in a counter-terrorism exercise in Luzon, in the Philippines. These were the first Japanese armored vehicles to have landed on foreign soil since World War II—at a place where Japanese tanks had first battled U.S. and Filipino forces.

Then 550 ARDB soldiers with AAVs participated in the 2019 Iron Fist exercise at Camp Pendleton, California, followed in June by the amphibious landing in Australia.

But realistically, what’s the operational concept behind the ARDB?

Certainly, Japan shares with Australia, the Philippines and the United States a concern that China may seize key Pacific islands it could use to interdict maritime traffic. But Japan’s constitution forbids its forces from coming to the aid of allies.

Thus, the ARDB’s purpose remains specific: to rapidly recapture Japan’s southwestern islands should they be occupied by Chinese forces. This remains in the United States and Australia’s interests, as the Japanese island belt effectively constrains PLA Navy operations.

Now, a lone 3,000-man brigade, no matter how capable, is not going to tip the balance in a high-intensity conflict. Thus Mina Pollmann argues in The Diplomat that “By the time the islands are taken over by China, Japan has already lost.” She opines Tokyo should instead shift funding to the Maritime and Air Self Defense forces to prevent Chinese forces from reaching any islands in the first place.

However, this overlooks that the amphibious brigade may deter smaller-scale “grey zone” actions possibly mounted by China’s paramilitary naval militias and coast guard. The ability to rapidly and credibly respond to island seizures could fundamentally alter the risk-reward calculus for such actions.

Furthermore, the brigade’s amphibious capabilities should improve the JSDF’s ability to provide disaster relief to isolated coastal and island communities.

Inevitably, some—particularly in China—will perceive Japan’s resurrected amphibious force as a harbinger of aggression. But realistically, Tokyo is simply developing a modest capability to respond to incursions on its many vulnerable islands.

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 July 2019.

Image: Reuters.