The National Interest

Michael Peck

Missiles, World

The first anti-ship smart bombs, invented like so many other weapons by the dark scientists of Nazi Germany, were not just deadly. They seemed inhuman.

Here's What You Need to Know: Perhaps the biggest lesson of all is that what is new is old. With each passing year, the weapons of World War II seem closer to the era of Gettysburg and Jutland than the high-tech warfare of today. That perception can encourage an unjustified smugness.

What is that strange bomb in the sky?

That’s what the sailors of the Italian battleship Roma must have wondered in the final moments before they died.

Naval warfare changed on Sept. 9, 1943. Dictator Benito Mussolini had been deposed, the new Italian government was abandoning a lost war and its doomed Nazi ally and the Italian fleet was sailing to Malta to surrender. But the habitually treacherous Nazis, who had always suspected their Italian allies of similar trickery, detected the Italian ships leaving port.

The Luftwaffe dispatched a force of Dornier Do-217 bombers to deal with the Italian ships.

As the bombers approached, the Italians were unsure whether the Germans meant to attack or just intimidate. They were relieved to see the German aircraft appear to drop their bombs into the ocean. Perhaps with uncharacteristic gentleness, the Germans were just firing warning shots.

But then something unexpected happened. Instead of plunging straight down into the sea, the bombs headed toward the Italian ships. One slammed into Roma’s hull, exited out the other side and exploded in the water, destroying an engine room.

A second bomb penetrated the deck into the forward magazine, where shells for the ship’s big 15-inch guns were stored. The battleship exploded, killing 1,253 members of her crew.

The age of the ship-killing missile had dawned.

The first anti-ship smart bombs, invented like so many other weapons by the dark scientists of Nazi Germany, were not just deadly. They seemed inhuman. A “Wellsian weapon from Mars,” was how one newspaper reporter described an early attack.

Smart bombs have become so common in modern warfare that we take them for granted. Yet 70 years ago, a bomb that could chase a ship seemed as exotic and frightening as the muskets of the conquistadors must have seemed to the Aztecs. The Germans “made them [the missiles] turn corners,” an Allied sailor complained.

Anti-ship guided missiles have been used for decades now. Missiles sank the Israeli destroyer Eilat in 1967 and the British destroyer Sheffield in 1982. Today, China hopes that weapons such as the DF-21D ballistic missile, with a range of a thousand miles, can sink U.S. aircraft carriers and thus neutralize American naval power in the Pacific.

But these weapons did not materialize overnight in a Beijing weapons lab. They are the fruits of Nazi research from more than 70 years ago.

A smart bomb named Fritz

The weapon that sank Roma was known by the very German name Fritz-X. It was not a powered missile but a 3,000-pound armor-piercing gravity bomb meant to be dropped from a bomber at 20,000 feet.

Battleships were armored to survive multiple bomb hits—in 1944, the Japanese super-battleship Musashi was hit by 17 bombs and 19 torpedoes before sinking. But a bomb dropped from high enough should have enough kinetic energy, imparted by gravity, to smash through thick deck armor.

The problem was hitting the battleship in the first place. High-flying bombers in the 1940s had scant chance of hitting a warship frantically weaving through the water at 30 knots. That meant aircraft had to come in low to attack, which made them easier targets for the ship’s antiaircraft guns and also robbed the bombs of kinetic energy.

The 11-foot-long Fritz-X, slung under the wing of a bomber, had radio-controlled fins that could change the munition’s glide path. A tail-mounted flare enabled the operator on the bomber to track and adjust the weapon’s course. Tests showed that 50 percent of bombs would land within five meters of the target—astounding accuracy for the 1940s.

Does this sound familiar? It should, because the concept endures in modern weapon such as America’s Joint Direct Attack Munition, a kit that makes dumb bombs smart by adding fins and satellite guidance.

The Hs 293 missile

The Fritz-X was an awesome battleship-killer, but only under the right conditions. A glide bomb has only gravity rather than a rocket motor for propulsion. The steerable fins on the Fritz-X could adjust its trajectory only slightly, meaning the bomb had to be dropped within three miles of the target.

While deadly to heavily armored warships, the armor-piercing Fritz-X was actually too much bomb for small ships. It would slice all the way through unarmored destroyers and transports and explode in the sea.

The Nazis had another weapon, a genuine anti-ship missile called the Hs 293. The 12-foot-long weapon looked like a miniature airplane with a rocket motor slung underneath.

The radio-controlled Hs 293 could be launched from 10 miles away, out of range of shipboard anti-aircraft guns. Its 2,300-pound high-explosive warhead detonated on contact with a lightly armored ship.

“In a typical deployment, the attacking aircraft would approach the target to within 12 kilometers (6 miles), then fly a parallel course in the opposite direction,” writes Martin Bollinger, author of Wizards and Warriors: The Development and Defeat of Radio Controlled Glide Bombs of the Third Reich.

“When the ship was about 45 degrees off the forward right side, the aircraft launched the HS-293,” Bollinger continues. “The Walther liquid-fueled rocket, running for 10 or 12 seconds, would accelerate to about 600 kilometers per hour (325 knots), at which point the operator had turned the missile into the target.”

“Once the rocket burned out,” Bollinger explains, “the missile continued with its forward momentum, maintaining a glide by virtue of short wings, until the operator steered it into the target.”

The electric razor missile defense

The British and Americans were gravely worried. By the fall of 1943, Allied forces had captured North Africa and Sicily, the U-boat threat was diminishing and the Luftwaffe faded before growing Allied air strength. Now the Brits and Americans could focus on the dangerous task of landing their armies on the European continent.

First they had to thwart the new German ship-killers. The Allies could mostly protect the vulnerable amphibious invasion fleets from regular German air attacks. But if German aircraft could stand off at a distance and lob bombs with pinpoint accuracy onto the soft-skinned transports and their escorts, then the Third Reich might stave off invasion.

Fortunately, a disgruntled German scientist had warned the Allies about the smart bombs in 1939, and Ultra code-breakers had intercepted German communications regarding the weapons.

The British outfitted the sloop Egret with special equipment to identify the radio frequencies used to control the German munitions. Some 13 days before Roma was sunk, Egret joined a convoy sailing within range of German bombers based in France.

As hoped, the Germans attacked the convoy with Hs 293 missiles. Unfortunately, one of the ships sunk was Egret.

The Allied landing at the southern Italian port of Salerno on Sept. 3, 1943 was a wake-up call for alliance. The Germans counterattacked and almost drove the Anglo-American troops into the sea. Gunfire from Allied warships saved the landing force … and the entire operation.

But at a terrible cost. The Luftwaffe launched more than 100 Fritz-X and Hs 293 weapons. A Fritz-X struck the famous British battleship Warspite and put the vessel out of commission for months.

Another Fritz-X hit a gun turret on the U.S. light cruiser Savannah and “penetrated through the two-inch armored surface of the turret, tore through three more decks and exploded in the ammunition handling room deep in the bowels of the ship,” Bollinger writes.

Miraculously, Savannah survived—but 197 of her crew did not. German guided weapons sank and badly damaged around a dozen ships off Salerno.

Convoys sailing the Atlantic and Mediterranean also suffered. Convoy KMF-26, whose escort included included two U.S. destroyers equipped with the first anti-missile jammers, was attacked off the Algerian coast on Nov. 26, 1943.

An Hs 293 slammed into the troop transport Rohna, carrying U.S. soldiers to India. At least 1,149 passengers and crew died in what Bollinger describes as the “greatest loss of life of U.S. service members at sea in a single ship in the history of the United States.”

It was not until the 1960s that U.S. authorities even admitted that Rohna had been sunk by a guided missile rather than conventional weapons.

Rumor spread among desperate sailors that switching on electric razors would jam the radio frequencies of the “Chase Me Charlies,” as the British called the guided munitions.

An urgent and massive anti-missile effort ensued. Ships were told to lay down smokescreens so Germans aircrews couldn’t see their targets—and to take high-speed evasive action under attack. But how could anchored transports unloading troops and supplies, or warships providing naval gunfire, maneuver at high speed?

The Allies pinned their hopes on electronic warfare, another class of modern weaponry originating in World War II. The British were already dropping aluminum foil decoys to jam German radars. Less well-known are the Allies’ intensive efforts to disrupt German anti-ship missiles.

Allied agents interrogated captured Luftwaffe aircrew. Recovery teams sifted through missile fragments from damaged ships and examined remnants of bombers left behind on airfields in Italy.

The most intensive work took place in labs across Britain and America including the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, where scientists worked feverishly to jam the radio frequencies used by German missile controllers. operators to control the missiles.

The British chose barrage jamming of multiple frequencies, while the Americans opted for what they considered a more efficient technique of jamming only specific frequencies. The U.S. installed the first jammers on two destroyers in September 1943.

The first anti-missile jammers were primitive and cumbersome by today’s standards. American equipment required multiple operators and devices to identify the correct frequency and match the jammer to the frequency—and do it all in 10 or 20 seconds before the missile hit its target.

Early jammers didn’t work. Based on faulty intelligence, the Allies guessed that the German missiles were controlled by High Frequency signals under 30 MHz. The German actually used the Very High Frequency band of around 50 MHz.

The missiles kept coming.

Yet by August 1944, the Germans missile campaign was over. Some of the last Hs 293s were not even launched at ships, but against French bridges used by Patton’s advancing tank columns. Less than a year after its dramatic debut, the German smart bomb threat disappeared.

No wonder weapon

It’s hard to estimate losses caused by the guided weapons. German air raids saturated Allied defenses by combining smart bomb attacks with conventional dive bomber and torpedo assaults, so it is always not clear which weapon hit a ship.

The Allies also tried to maintain morale by attributing guided weapon losses to conventional weapons.

Bollinger counts 903 aircraft sorties that carried around 1,200 guided weapons. Of those 1,200, almost a third were never fired because the launch aircraft aborted or were intercepted.

Of the remaining 700 weapons, another third malfunctioned. Of the approximately 470 whose guidance systems worked, at most 51—or just over 10 percent—actually hit their targets or landed close enough to damage them.

Bollinger calculates that just 17 to 24 ships were sunk and 14 to 21 damaged.

“At most, only one weapon in 24 dispatched from a German airfield scored a hit or damage-causing near miss,” Bollinger writes. “Only about one in 14 of the missiles launched achieved similar success, and at most one in nine of those known to respond to operator guidance was able to hit the target or cause significant damage via a near-miss.”

“This is very different from the 50-percent hit rate experienced during operational testing,” Bollinger points out.

To be fair, the technology was new. There were no lasers or fire control computers. The Fritz-X and Hs 293 were manually guided all the way. Operators had to track both missile and target through cloud, fog and smoke, without the benefit of modern thermal sights.

“It was virtually impossible to hit a ship that was steaming more than 20 knots and could fire back,” Bollinger tells War is Boring. “Almost all of the hits were against slow and/or defenseless targets.”

Bollinger hypothesizes that a phenomenon called “multi-path interference,” unknown at the time, may also have hampered the performance of the Hs 293. Radio command signals sent from the bomber to the missile might have overshot the weapon, bounced off the ocean surface below and interfered with the missile guidance signal.

The early jammers were ineffective, but Bollinger believes that by the time of the Normandy assault in June 1944, the equipment had improved enough to offer a measure of protection—and partly explains why German missiles performed poorly later in the war.

Strangely, while the Germans took measures to counteract Allied jamming of their air defense radars, they never really addressed the possibility that their anti-ship missiles were also being jammed.

It’s wrong to blame the bomb for the faults of the bomber. The real cause for the failure of German smart bombs was that by the time they were introduced in late 1943, the Luftwaffe was almost a spent force.

Already thinly spread supporting the hard-pressed armies in Russia and the West, the German air arm suffered relentless bombardment by U.S. B-17s and B-24s. The Third Reich could never deploy more than six bomber squadrons at a time equipped with the Fritz-X and Hs 293.

When the Luftwaffe ruled the skies over Poland and France in 1939, this might have been enough. By late 1943, a guided-bomb run was practically suicide.

German bombers making daylight attacks had to run a gauntlet of fighters protecting Allied ships in the daytime. Night attacks were marginally safer for the bombers but still exposed them to radar-equipped British and American night fighters. The Allies aggressively bombed any airfield suspected of harboring the smart bombers.

“Allied fighter air cover was by far the most important factor,” Bollinger tells War is Boring. “Not only did it lead to large numbers of glide-bombing aircraft getting shot down, it also forced the Germans to shift missions from daylight to dusk or nighttime. This in itself lead to a major and measurable reduction in accuracy.”

Many raids would cost the Germans a few bombers. By the standards of the thousand-bomber raids over Germany, this was trifling. But for the handful of specially trained and equipped Luftwaffe squadrons, it was catastrophic.

Of the 903 aircraft sorties, Bollinger estimates that in 112 of them, the bombers were lost before launching their weapons. Another 21 were shot down or crashed on the return flight, for an overall loss ratio of 15 percent.

“Each time a pilot departed on a glide bomb mission, he had almost a one-in-seven chance of never returning in that aircraft safely,” Bollinger says. “Put another way, the probability that a pilot would return safely after each of the first 10 missions was only 20 percent.”

Learning from history

The rise and fall of the Nazi anti-ship missiles offers lessons for the U.S. and its opponents in the present day. American planners worry that smart anti-ship weapons in the hands of China, smaller nations like Iran or even insurgent groups could threaten U.S. warships and amphibious forces.

One lesson from the 1940s is that passive defenses such as jamming have limited utility against access denial weapons. The best defense is to destroy the launch vehicle before it can fire. “Kill the archer” is the term the Pentagon uses.

China stands to learn the most profound lesson. For all the power and terror of the German anti-ship weapons, they could not compensate for the inability of the German navy and Luftwaffe to confront the Allied navies on the open seas.

Smart bombs did worry Allied commanders, but the new munitions couldn’t prevent the amphibious invasions of Italy and France. Chinese missiles might disrupt U.S. operations, but they are no substitute for countering a powerful navy with an effective navy of your own.

Perhaps the biggest lesson of all is that what is new is old. With each passing year, the weapons of World War II seem closer to the era of Gettysburg and Jutland than the high-tech warfare of today. That perception can encourage an unjustified smugness.

The problems modern navies and air forces struggle with—anti-ship guided missiles, jamming, operations in contested airspace—were the same that German pilots and Allied sailors faced.

The terror that the crew of an Italian battleship, British cruiser or American merchant ship felt at the sight of German missiles might not differ from what a U.S. destroyer or carrier crew might feel while being targeted by Chinese ballistic missiles.

You can follow Michael Peck on Twitter at @Mipeck1 or on Facebook.

This article first appeared at War is Boring in 2014.

Image: Reuters

Sebastien Roblin

U.S. Military, Asia

For the foreseeable future, the United States and China are locked in a security competition. 

Here's What You Need to Know: Land-based missile batteries can threaten ships dozens or even hundreds of miles away.

(This article first appeared in 2018.)

On July 12, 2018, the USS Racine met her grisly fate.

The 522-foot long tank landing ship was struck by four different types of guided missiles, one of which triggered a massive explosion that sent shards of debris spraying across the sea and ripped open part of her hull, exposing the inner decks. Finally, a Mark 48 torpedo struck the forty-six-year-old vessel beneath the waterline and nearly snapped off her bow. An hour later, the five-thousand-ton ship sank to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean fifty-five miles north of Hawaii.

At least four different military services participated in the Racine’s ritual sacrifice on the altar of the Pacific Rim (or RIMPAC) exercise known as SINKEX. Participants included P-8 Poseidon patrol planes of the Australian Navy, Type 12 surface-to-surface missile batteries of the Japanese Self Defense Ground Force, the U.S. Navy Los Angeles-class submarine Olympia, and artillerymen and helicopter pilots from the U.S. Army.

Yes, you read that last part right.

An Army AH-64E Apache Guardian attack helicopter flew within range using a remote-controlled MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone (a unique capability of the Guardian), located the Racine and shared targeting data across Link 16 datalinks to two artillery units.

One battery fired Norwegian-built Naval Strike Missiles from a Palletized Loading System 10x10 truck sixty-three miles away. The ship was attacked by six rockets from a HIMARS multiple-rocket system of the 17th Field Artillery Brigade on Kauai, Hawaii. You can see the missile launches and the destruction of the Racine in this video.

But why on earth is the land warfare branch practicing sinking ships?

Pacific War Redux

The United States and China are locked in a security competition for the foreseeable future, so the Pentagon is re-gearing for great-power conflict—and deploying a slew of new buzzwords to explain how it will go about it.

Beijing claims huge swathes of the South China Sea as territorial waters, and is establishing a network of military bases with friendly governments to envelope potential rivals such as India and Australia. Therefore, a U.S.-China clash would likely concern ships, missiles and airplanes, and perhaps a side order of special and amphibious forces—and not so much tank and mechanized infantry brigades. After all, per the famous quote, “Never get involved in a land war in Asia.”

So the Army is looking to remain relevant through a doctrine called Multi-Domain Battle which see integrating Army operations with the Navy and Air Force in air, sea and cyber domains.

Regarding artillery, some see potential in a modern incarnation of the defunct the Coast Artillery Corps, which protected U.S. bases and harbors from attack with large guns. It was finally disbanded in 1950 as technological advances rendered fixed, short-range coastal defenses obsolete.

Today, land-based missile batteries can threaten ships dozens or even hundreds of miles away. However, unlike Japan or Sweden, the United States is unlikely to have hostile surface warships operating within range of its coastline. However, some theorists propose the Pentagon could forward deploy a sort of “expeditionary coast artillery” force to island flashpoints in the Pacific.

This would be borrowing a page from Beijing’s playbook. The PLA Navy has built a web of small military bases on tiny disputed islands in the contested waters of the South China Sea—or even on artificial islands built with dredged up soil. These bases are hosting anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile batteries that could theoretically threaten large “bubbles” of territory around them—a strategy known as anti-access/area denial (A2/AD). Thus the Marine Corps already has a concept for countering these bases with its own Expeditionary Advance Bases on islands of the Western Pacific.

HIMARS to the Rescue?

The Army’s multiple-rocket launchers were originally intended to unleash extraordinarily deadly and indiscriminate barrages over a large area using cluster munitions. However, recently the Marine Corps and Army have begun launching individual M31 GPS-guided rockets that offer similar precisions to a guided missile.

The platform of choice for recent operations in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq has been the lighter, air-transportable M142 HIMARS truck-based system, which weighs twelve tons and can carry six standard 227-millimeter rockets or a single larger ATACMS missile, which can hit targets up to 190 miles away.

Such munitions may be accurate enough to potentially hit a ship, as the SINKEX exercise highlighted, but GPS-guidance alone will not suffice to hit a moving target, so the rockets may require upgrading with a seeker or use of laser guidance by a third party. Indeed, there are some doubts as to whether HIMARS at RIMPAC actually demonstrated the range and accuracy to hit the Racine. The Army is reportedly seeking upgraded ATACMS missiles with seekers to hit moving targets.

Not only could HIMARS be deployed to island bases, they could even be fired off the decks of Navy ships. HIMARS from the 11th Marine Regiment tested this concept in the 2017 Dawn Blitz exercise, (you can see the launch in this video) shooting M31rockets to strike a target forty-three miles away from the deck of the USS Anchorage, a Landing Platform Dock. This capability is particularly intriguing because many LPDs entirely lack missiles to engage surface targets themselves.

While this capability is primarily intended for bombardment of shore targets, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller spoke of his interest in outfitting leathernecks with anti-ship missiles in 2016.

This initiative is encouraged by the Marine’s experience of the Battle of Guadalcanal during World War II. The day after the 1st Marine Division landed on the Solomon Islands in August 1942, the Navy covering force suffered a devastating defeat in the Battle of Savo Island and was forced to withdraw. The disembarked Marines were left exposed for weeks without their naval support, their base at Henderson Field subject to nightly bombardments by Japanese battleships.

The Marines plan for their anti-ship weapons to be integrated with the Navy’s air and surface assets via a new technology called “Cooperative Engagement.” Thus, Marine missiles—both on and off ships—could contribute to the Navy’s new “distributed lethality” doctrine of networking sensor data together while spreading out firepower across more platforms.

Deadly Cargo Palettes

Several years ago, Russia demonstrated how it could use cargo containers as launch pads for Klub cruise missiles. This would make the weapon easy to transport—or even employ from a ship—while concealing it from detection and pre-emptive strikes.

The United States has seized on the idea with its “palettized” missile-launch container, which could also be fired from a ship—or even plopped down onto a proposed floating platform.

In the SINKEX exercise, the Army demonstrated the system using newly acquired Naval Strike Missiles. The subsonic cruise missiles can skim low over the sea or terrain to hit sea or land targets up to 115 miles away, combining a GPS and an infrared-seekers for guidance.

This kind of improvised solution using available technology seems preferable to the Pentagon’s notorious predilection for overly-tailored and expensive solutions to capability gaps. The affordable NSM currently seems to be the munition of choice, the Army and Marines may also be interested in adapting the higher-capability LR-ASM, or upgraded versions of the older Tomahawk or Harpoon

The deployment of the AH-64E Guardian at RIMPAC also highlighted the use of aviation assets in non-traditional maritime roles. The Army has already experimented with using ship-deployed Apaches in a naval strike role, though longer-term sea deployment would likely require ruggedizing the choppers. Even the Air Force has tested deploying assets such as B-52 bombers and A-10 Thunderbolts in maritime patrol and naval strike roles, despite these being designed for very different missions.

Thus, the Army and Marine Corps’s growing anti-ship capabilities show a willingness to adapt weapons systems originally designed for a Cold War slugfest in twentieth-century Europe to meet the changing security environment of the Pacific in the twenty-first century.

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 2018.

Image: U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Jonathan Valdes Montijo

Sebastien Roblin

Pearl Harbor, Americas

Unlike the aerial attack, the submarine attack failed spectacularly. 

Here's What You Need to Know: An hour before the air attack, a squadron of tiny Japanese midget submarines attempted to slip into Pearl Harbor's defenses.

On Dec. 7, 1941, the aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy rained devastation upon the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. But Japanese warplanes didn’t actually fire the first shots that brought America into a massive Pacific War.

An hour before the air attack, a squadron of tiny Japanese midget submarines attempted to slip into the harbor’s defenses, like burglars in the night, to wreak havoc on Battleship Row. Unlike the aerial assault, the sailors failed spectacularly — and the story is often forgotten.

By the 1930s, Imperial Japan and the United States were set on a collision course. Tokyo’s decision to invade China in 1931 and intensify their brutal campaign six years had provoked ultimately irrevocable tensions.

The United States responded to the incursion into China with increasing sanctions, culminating with an embargo on petroleum in July 1941 that crippled the Japan’s economy. Japanese military leaders had wanted to capture the Dutch East Indies to secure its oil wealth, but knew it would trigger war with the Unites States.

While U.S.-Japanese negotiations came within striking distance of a peace agreement, Roosevelt was a hard bargainer, demanding Japan’s leaders order a complete withdrawal from China. They refused.

Thus, Japanese Adm. Yamamoto began planning for a “short victorious war.” The key to this idea was knocking out the battleships of the U.S. Pacific fleet at their home base of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii to buy the Japanese Army time to complete the conquest of the Western Pacific.

Along with a massive air strike from a Japanese carrier task force would constitute the main attack, the Navy coordinated the undersea assault using midget submarines.

During World War II, Japan, England, Italy and Germany all employed midget submarines to stealthily infiltrate shallow, defended harbors and attack vulnerable capital ships. The Japanese Navy’s midget submarines had hidden their developments by calling the ships Type A Kō-hyōteki , or “Target A”

Japanese officials hoped the designation would deceive foreign analysts into believing the 78-feet long submarines were actually mock ships for naval gunnery practice. In reality, each of the 46-ton subs had a crew of two and was armed with two 450-millimeter Type 97 torpedoes with 800 pound warheads.

The little submarines could sprint up to 26 miles per hour submerged, but could not dive deeper than 100 meters. More importantly, the Type As had no engine and ran purely on batteries.

This gave the diminutive vessels a maximum endurance of 12 hours at speeds of 6 miles per hour. The subs often ran out of power much faster in real combat.

As a result, a larger submarine mothership had to bring the Type As close to the target area. Even so, the battery limitations made it unlikely the midget sub could make it back to safety. Each one had a 300-pound scuttling charge as a self-destruct device.

Just getting to the designation was difficult enough. Since the small boats were difficult to control even while swimming in a straight line, crews had to manually move lead weights backwards and forwards to stabilize the vessel.

With these obvious issues, on Oct. 19, 1941, the Japanese Navy began modifying five Type A subs with improved pneumatic steering devices, as well as net-cutters and guards for fending off anti-submarine nets. Workers at the Kure Naval District painted over the submarine’s running lights to help hide them from enemy spotters.

Afterwards the midgets went to the Kamegakubi Naval Proving Ground and crews loaded them onto the backs of five large Type C-1 submarines, the I-16, I-18, I-20, I-22 and I-24. On Nov. 25, 1941, The motherships set sail for Pearl Harbor.

While on route, the so-called “Special Attack Unit” received the coded message “Climb Mount Niitaka 1208.” This meant authorities in Tokyo had not found a diplomatic solution and signaled the go-ahead for the Pearl Harbor attack.

On Dec. 6, 1941, the C-1s swam to points within 12 miles of Pearl Harbor. Then, between the hours of midnight and 3:30 A.M. the next day, the ships released their deadly payloads.

For the crews, getting inside Pearl Harbor posed a serious challenge. Ships could only enter the port through a 65 foot-deep channel guarded by an anti-submarine net 35 feet deep.

Boats on either side of the nets tugged them apart to allow friendly boats to pass through. On top of that, American destroyers prowled in a five mile arc around the harbor entrance, assisted by watchful eyes on orbiting PBY Catalina maritime patrol planes.

On paper, the Japanese intended for the submarine attack to work as well-planned heist. The midget subs would sneak in by following American ships passing through openings in the anti-submarine net.

Then the subs would lay low until the air attack sowed chaos throughout the harbor, at which point they would unleash their torpedoes at any American battleships that survived the bombing. Afterwards, the midget subs would slip away to Hawaii’s Lanai Island.

The submarines I-68 and I-69 would wait no more than 24 hours to pick up any surviving crew. The Japanese did not plan to recover the Type As themselves.

If everything worked out right, American officials would only receive the Japanese declaration of hostilities mere moments before the attack commenced. However, things didn’t go according to plan.

Just before 4:00 A.M., the minesweeper USS Condor spotted the periscope of the midget submarine Ha-20 and called over the destroyer USS Ward to search the area.

Just over an hour and a half later, crew aboard the Ward spotted a periscope in the wake of the cargo ship Antares as it passed through the anti-submarines nets. While a PBY Catalina patrol plane dropped smoke markers near the sub’s position, the Ward charged the sub.

Gunners fired two shots from the ship’s 4-inch main gun at less than 100 meters and followed up with four depth charges. The Type A vanished into the water.

For the crews, getting inside Pearl Harbor posed a serious challenge. Ships could only enter the port through a 65 foot-deep channel guarded by an anti-submarine net 35 feet deep.

Boats on either side of the nets tugged them apart to allow friendly boats to pass through. On top of that, American destroyers prowled in a five mile arc around the harbor entrance, assisted by watchful eyes on orbiting PBY Catalina maritime patrol planes.

On paper, the Japanese intended for the submarine attack to work as well-planned heist. The midget subs would sneak in by following American ships passing through openings in the anti-submarine net.

Then the subs would lay low until the air attack sowed chaos throughout the harbor, at which point they would unleash their torpedoes at any American battleships that survived the bombing. Afterwards, the midget subs would slip away to Hawaii’s Lanai Island.

The submarines I-68 and I-69 would wait no more than 24 hours to pick up any surviving crew. The Japanese did not plan to recover the Type As themselves.

If everything worked out right, American officials would only receive the Japanese declaration of hostilities mere moments before the attack commenced. However, things didn’t go according to plan.

Just before 4:00 A.M., the minesweeper USS Condor spotted the periscope of the midget submarine Ha-20 and called over the destroyer USS Ward to search the area.

Just over an hour and a half later, the crew aboard the Ward spotted a periscope in the wake of the cargo ship Antares as it passed through the anti-submarines nets. While a PBY Catalina patrol plane dropped smoke markers near the sub’s position, the Ward charged the sub.

Gunners fired two shots from the ship’s 4-inch main gun at less than 100 meters and followed up with four depth charges. The Type A vanished into the water.

Taking on seawater caused the batteries to spew out deadly chlorine gas. A depth charge attack finally knocked out the periscope and disabled the midget submarine’s remaining undamaged torpedo.

Sakamaki decided to try and sail their stricken craft back to the mothership. He and Inagaki passed out as the choking gasses filling the inside of their ship.

The two managed to regain consciousness in the evening and decided to ground their sub near the town of Waimānalo to the east. However, they crashed on yet another reef.

A patrolling PBY bomber dropped depth charges on the crippled submarine. Sakamaki decided to abandon ship and attempted to detonate the scuttling charge — but even the ship’s self-destruct device failed to work.

Sakamaki succeeded in swimming ashore and promptly fell unconscious. His crewmate drowned.

The following morning, Hawaiian soldier David Akui captured a Japanese sailor. The first Japanese prisoner of war of World War II, Sakamaki refused to cooperate during his interrogation, requesting that he be executed or allowed to commit suicide.

The Japanese military became aware of his capture but officially claimed that all of the submarine crews had been lost in action. A memorial to the Special Attack Unit omitted his name.

The crew of Ha-18 abandoned ship without firing either of their torpedoes after falling victim to a depth charge attack. Nineteen years later, the U.S. Navy recovered the sub from the floor of Hawaii’s Keehi Lagoon and ultimately shipped it off for display at the Japanese Naval Academy at Etajima.

The fate of the fifth submarine, Ha-16, remains controversial. At 10:40 P.M., the crew of the I-16 intercepted a radio message that appeared to repeat the word “Success!” A few hours later, they received a second transmission: “Unable to navigate.”

The belief was that Ha-16 transmitted these alerts. In 2009, a Novadocumentary crew identified three parts of the midget submarine in a navy salvage pile off of West Loch, Hawaii.

A popular belief is that Ha-16 successfully entered the harbor and fired off its torpedoes. Then the crew slipped out and scuttled the sub off of West Loch island before perishing of unknown causes.

U.S. Navy salvage teams probably later scooped up the sub amidst the wreckage of six landing craft destroyed in the West Loch disaster of 1944. They then proceeded to dump the whole pile of debris further out at sea.

That no one ever found the Ha-16’s torpedoes gave rise to the theory that the midget submarine might have successfully torpedoed the battleship USS Oklahoma. The USS West Virginia was another possible target.

A photo taken from an attacking Japanese torpedo bomber at 8:00 A.M., which appears to show torpedo trails lancing towards Oklahoma without a corresponding splash from an air-dropped weapon added more weight to the idea. In addition, the damage to the Oklahoma, and the fact that it capsized, suggested to some it was struck by a tiny sub’s heavier torpedoes.

However, this theory is dubious. The Oklahoma capsized because all the hatches were open for an inspection at the time of the attack. The heavy damage can be explained by the more than a half-dozen air-dropped torpedoes that hit the ship.

It is more likely Ha-16 launched the torpedoes at another vessel. At 10:04 A.M., the light cruiser USS St. Louis reported it had taken fire from a submarine, but both torpedoes missed.

In the end, the air attack accomplished what the midget submarines could not. Japan’s naval aviators sank three U.S. battleships, crippling another five, blasted 188 U.S. warplanes — most sitting on the ground — and killed 2,403 American service members.

Unfortunately for officials in Tokyo, the Japanese Navy had struck a powerful blow, but not a crippling one. The bombardment failed to hit the repair facilities and fuel depots, which allowed the U.S. Pacific fleet to get back on its feet relatively quickly.

Just as importantly, not a single U.S. aircraft carrier was in Pearl Harbor at the time. The flattops would swiftly prove their dominance over battleships in the coming Pacific War.

Despite the debacle, the Japanese Navy continued sending Kō-hyōteki into combat. As at Pearl Harbor, the submariners in their tiny ships had very limited successes in operations from Australia to Alaska to Madagascar.

This first appeared in WarIsBoring.

Image: Creative Commons "Pearl Harbor" by The U.S. Army is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Doug Bandow

North Korea,

If it is inconceivable that Kim is prepared to give up all his nukes, why continue demanding that he do so?

Sydney Seiler, a national intelligence officer in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, believes that North Korea is unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons. Its objective, he observed, is to gain acceptance as a nuclear state.

He seemed almost irritated with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) saying it, “simply squandered away an opportunity to move forward with it, with the United States in a better relationship.” Despite Washington’s best efforts, Seiler complained, “We have made clear in all of our negotiations—what it is we expect from the North ... and what benefits would accrue to the DPRK.” Alas, “until now, the regime just has simply not wanted to take these exit ramps.” Indeed, in Seiler’s view at the failed Hanoi summit “once again, North Korea was unwilling to go down the credible path of denuclearization.”

However, Pyongyang isn’t acting irrationally. The greatest, if inadvertent, advocates of nonproliferation are the existing nuclear powers which have shown no inclination to yield their own nukes. India, Israel, and Pakistan all acquired nuclear weapons against Washington’s wishes.

Nuclear weapons have turned the DPRK into a global player of sorts. They offer prestige and the potential for extortion. More fundamentally, they are, Seiler allowed, “a capability that's designed to ensure the survival of the Kim regime. It's not necessarily good for the nation state but it's not meant to be. It's meant to pursue this―to protect the system and protect the regime.”

If this is the case, the odds of convincing the North to abandon its nuclear program are minimal. There is no more powerful impulse than self-preservation. Since dictators see themselves and, in the case of North Korea, the ruling dynasty, as synonymous with the nation, yielding a weapon necessary for self-preservation is tantamount to suicide.

Which necessarily raises doubts about the viability of a strategy based on denuclearization. If it is inconceivable that Kim is prepared to give up all his nukes, why continue demanding that he do so?

Still, Seiler rejected accepting the North as a nuclear power. He explained: “It is the abandonment of an ally with the Republic of Korea (ROK). It is a proclamation that we have given up on our global nonproliferation principles. It is a signal to other aspirants who are thinking―‘Should we or shouldn't we?’―that they can get away with it.”

None of these are persuasive reasons, however. The alliance with the ROK doesn’t require eliminating North Korean nuclear weapons, even though they greatly complicate the security relationship. Particularly ominous are estimates that within just a few years the North could have 200 nuclear weapons. However, not doing the impossible—ridding the DPRK of its nuclear weapons—does not constitute “abandonment.”

Nor does accepting the inevitable mean dropping nonproliferation as a priority. In regards to the latter, the U.S. already has done so. Washington opposed the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Israel but then responded with private acceptance, applying no punitive penalties once Israel acquired its arsenal. Today Washington never raises the issue, simply ignoring the embarrassing fact. And if the issue was officially raised, the Israeli embassy could host a celebratory party and most members of Congress would show up.

Washington took a less friendly stance toward India and Pakistan, but sanctions were a complete bust. The imperatives of confronting each other and China created enormous pressure on both to become nuclear powers. The U.S. eventually accepted their status, particularly that of India. Nonproliferation concerns fell by the geopolitical wayside, since treating New Delhi as an enemy would drive away an important counterweight to China without causing India to yield its nuclear weapons.

As for signaling other nuclear aspirants, Washington already has done so in two important ways. The first, as noted earlier, is accepting India, Israel, and Pakistan as nuclear powers. America has abandoned its principled nonproliferation policy which cannot be reclaimed.

The second, and equally important, factor was turning nuclear weapons into an essential deterrent for weaker states. Once American officials decided that they had been anointed by providence to run the world, they sent a message that the world was divided in two: countries that bombed other states, and countries that got bombed.

That played out in practice in Iraq (twice), Afghanistan, the Balkans, Libya, and more. However, Washington treated nuclear powers with much greater respect. As in, the U.S. did not attack them. The Libyan lesson was particularly powerful, since Muammar el -Qaddagi traded away his missile and nuclear programs for international respectability. For a time he was feted in Western capitals, but the moment he seemed vulnerable during the Arab Spring his new friends deserted him. Ultimately, he was pulled out of a storm drain in the city of Sirte and met an unpleasant end. The obvious lesson: Any dictator stupid enough to give up his nukes risked a similar fate.

Kim Jong-un evidently isn’t stupid. If there is any chance to get him to disarm, it requires convincing him that he would be safe from attack from the current and future administrations, even if an opportunity for regime change arrived. That would require more than empty words and meaningless gestures. The Singapore summit statement places the importance of a better bilateral relationship and improved regional environment before denuclearization, which North Korean officials have told me was intentional. And it makes sense though, of course, following those steps wouldn’t ensure that Pyongyang would then denuclearize.

As a matter of policy, there is no need for the Biden administration to formally and publicly acknowledge a nuclear DPRK. However, in practice Washington should accept reality and develop a policy of arms control, offering sanctions relief and other concessions to limit and, hopefully, ultimately reverse the North’s program. The final objective would be denuclearization. However, the immediate goal would be to forestall the world foreseen by  the RAND Corporation and Asan Institute for Policy Studies—North Korea as a middling nuclear state, alongside India, United Kingdom, and even China.

Insisting that an existing nuclear power cannot be a nuclear power demonstrates the otherworldly character of current U.S. policy. The Biden administration should root relations with the North to current reality. Success still might prove illusive. However, at least there would be a chance for success.

Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of several books, including Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World and co-author of The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South Korea.

Image: Reuters

Ethen Kim Lieser

Coronavirus,

The World Health Organization warned it likely increases the risk of hospitalization in those infected.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that recently culled data from some countries suggest that the highly transmissible Delta variant likely increases the risk of hospitalization in those infected.

“In terms of severity, we have seen some countries suggest that there is increased risk of hospitalization for people who are infected with the Delta variant,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, said during a Tuesday press briefing.

However, “we haven’t seen that translate to increased death,” she added.

Van Kerkhove noted that similar to other strains, the Delta variant is particularly dangerous for individuals who have underlying health conditions, which can include obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

“The risk factors for severe disease and death are the same,” she said. “If you have underlying conditions, no matter what age you are, you’re at an increased risk of hospitalization.”

The Delta variant, first detected by scientists in India last fall, has rapidly spread to more than one hundred forty countries so far. After being identified in the United States just a few months ago, the variant is now responsible for more than ninety percent of all sequenced cases, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has stated.

According to the latest data compiled by the agency, the United States is currently witnessing roughly hundred thirty thousand new cases per day, which is more than 700 percent higher compared to the beginning of July.

Booster Shots

In response to the Delta variant, top health officials in President Joe Biden’s administration are planning to announce that most Americans should get a coronavirus booster shot eight months after becoming fully vaccinated. The plan, which could be announced as soon as this week, would involve administering third shots beginning in September or October.

Earlier this week, Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, indicated that new data out of Israel—which showed a reduction in the effectiveness of Pfizer’s vaccine against severe illness among seniors who were fully vaccinated in January or February—are indeed forcing health officials to rethink their position on booster shots.

“The people who got immunized in January are the ones that are now having more breakthrough cases,” Collins said during an interview on The Hugh Hewitt Show.

The latest estimates suggest that a shade over fifty percent of Americans are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. While vaccinations have been increasing in recent weeks, millions are still firmly opposed to getting inoculated.

300 Million Cases

Since the beginning of the pandemic a year and a half ago, more than two hundred million people worldwide have become infected. Last week, WHO officials warned that the figure could easily reach three hundred million early next year.

“Whether we reach three hundred million and how fast we get there depends on all of us,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

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

South China Sea, Asia

Beijing, for instance, has proclaimed repeatedly, loudly and stridently that it commands “indisputable sovereignty” within a nine-dash line enclosing some 80–90 percent of the South China Sea.

Here's What You Need to Know: To uphold freedom of the sea, U.S. Navy and friendly ships and planes should exercise every prerogative to which they’re entitled by the law of the sea, in every square inch of airspace and waterspace where they’re entitled to exercise it.

Weeping, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments! Those were sounds emanating from Beijing following the July 2016 ruling from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.

International law has a way of accommodating realities of power—of deferring to the strong. Kudos go to the jurists, consequently, for speaking truth to power—for upholding the plain meaning of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) rather than softening their findings or declining to rule on the most contentious matters in hopes of fostering amity with China. John F. Kennedy would award them a profile in courage.

Beijing, for instance, has proclaimed repeatedly, loudly and stridently that it commands “indisputable sovereignty” within a nine-dash line enclosing some 80–90 percent of the South China Sea. That includes exclusive economic zones (EEZs) apportioned to coastal states such as the Philippines, the claimant that brought its case before the UNCLOS tribunal. Indisputable sovereignty is a sea grab.

And a land grab, even if much of the land is watery. At issue is Scarborough Shoal; the shoal is a submerged reef deep within the Philippines’ EEZ, extending two hundred nautical miles offshore and grants the coastal state exclusive rights to tap natural resources in those waters and the seafloor beneath. China’s coast guard and navy shut their Philippine counterparts out of the waters at Scarborough Shoal—that is, out of waters allocated to Manila by treaty—in 2012.

The tribunal rejected not just China’s claims to the waters adjoining Scarborough Shoal; it rejected the nine-dashed line as a whole. Beijing has claimed sovereignty—physical control upheld by a monopoly of force—within that expanse based on “historic rights”. In other words, officialdom contends that since Chinese fishermen worked those waters for centuries, they and the geographic features within belong to China.

Not so, say the UN judges. They point out that fishermen from other Southeast Asian countries plied their trade in the same waters. But even if historic rights once commanded some validity, they note, UNCLOS—to which China is a party, and to which it consented—supersedes any such claims. The Philippine exclusive economic zone, then, belongs to the Philippines.

And so it went. The UNCLOS tribunal also held that no island, atoll or reef in the Spratly Islands is entitled to an EEZ. The treaty text sets criteria for judging a feature’s legal status: if it can sustain human habitation or economic life from its innate resources, it qualifies as an island encircled by an exclusive economic zone.

The judges administered a mild shock. Commentators, including yours truly, have generally interpreted the convention’s requirements to mean that an island with its own freshwater supply qualifies as an island. The jurists demurred, pointing out that no one has ever inhabited the Spratly Islands except in transient fashion. Still less has China ever exercised exclusive control over South China Sea waters. Heck, the decision even downgraded Taiwan’s Itu Aba (Taiping) Island, the largest of the Spratly Islands and a feature boasting fresh water of its own.

The tribunal, furthermore, took Beijing to task for its island-building project. Manila maintained that Chinese engineers were unlawfully erecting artificial islands within the Philippine EEZ. UNCLOS allows coastal states to build artificial islands within their own EEZs, but not those belonging to others. The judges agreed. They also held that China had wrought “irreparable harm” to the marine environment while excavating the seafloor to expand rocks or reefs into islands capable of supporting airfields, piers and other infrastructure.

China “destroyed evidence” of these features’ natural and thus legal status to boot. That’s doubtless a feature—not a bug—in the process from Beijing’s standpoint. Tampering with evidence is no big deal for an offender willing to flout the law. In short, very little didn’t go the Philippines’ way in the proceedings. It was a win-win day for Manila, to borrow the hackneyed business jargon whereby Chinese interlocutors seem so bewitched.

Which leaves the question: what next? First of all, it’s plain that this is not over. Americans are accustomed to an orderly legal process. A court hands down its judgment, the authorities execute it, and that’s that. Not so in this case.

The UNCLOS tribunal ruling constitutes one more milestone in an unfolding strategic competition between China and rival claimants such as the Philippines and Vietnam, the latter backed by the United States and, with luck, by other friendly powers such as Australia and Japan. Let’s take our victory lap today—and don our game faces tomorrow. In all likelihood this will be a long, trying contest.

Second, Chinese interlocutors are fond of invoking American history, in hopes of finding some historical precedent that will disarm U.S. officialdom in interactions on quarrelsome matters. The Monroe Doctrine often comes up, and some Westerners are taken in by the analogy. So do the Cuban Missile Crisis and other past controversies.

Here’s one I’ve never seen invoked, but one that might discomfit Beijing: Andrew Jackson. As a fellow son of Tennessee, I’ve never been able to summon up much enthusiasm for “Old Hickory”. President Jackson’s cavalier disregard of the law is mainly why. After the U.S. Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice John Marshall found—in Worcester v. Georgia (1832)—that Georgia laws authorizing the seizure of Cherokee lands breached federal treaties with the Cherokee nation, Jackson reputedly replied: “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”

The shade of Old Hickory evidently dwells in Beijing, which has declared that it will ignore the UNCLOS ruling despite having acceded to UNCLOS. Sucks to be you if you’re Filipino—or Cherokee.

And, like the U.S. Supreme Court, the UNCLOS tribunal has no force at its disposal—no navy or coast guard—to dispatch to the scene to enforce its decision. Another eminent American statesman, Theodore Roosevelt held forth a century after Jackson’s day on behalf of an international court wielding the sanction of physical force. A century later, Roosevelt’s vision has borne little fruit.

To be sure, the UN Security Council could authorize enforcement of the UNCLOS tribunal’s decision, except Security Council resolutions demand the concurrence of all five permanent members . . . including China. So much for UN enforcement action.

Short of UN action, seafaring powers will have to band together to oppose Chinese overreach. And the United States cannot do it all alone. If Asian and extraregional powers care enough about freedom of the sea to mount a sustained effort to defend it, the resulting maritime consortium could deter China. If the seagoing community proves apathetic, on the other hand, China could prevail by default—and do serious damage both to Asian interests and to the liberal system of nautical trade and commerce.

Third, China is politically and strategically predictable but tactically unpredictable. Politically and strategically predictable because the leadership has gone on record, again and again, proclaiming that the UNCLOS tribunal has no standing to judge what Beijing sees as rights dating from remote antiquity. The leadership can hardly back down now for fear of being hoist by the standard it has set—that it’s the protector of historic rights that amount to a birthright.

Tactics are another matter. Chinese strategic traditions hold that there can never be enough deception in diplomacy and warfare. Roughly speaking, Beijing has a few options. It can comply with the UN ruling. That’s a nonstarter.

It can ignore the ruling, let the furor subside, and, assuming it does, get back to business as usual. A quiet, temporary tactical withdrawal would suit China’s purposes while costing the leadership little in political terms. Afterward China could resume its “small-stick diplomacy,” relying chiefly on law-enforcement ships and aircraft to get its way vis-à-vis lesser contenders while backing its “white hulls” up with naval, air and missile forces.

Or Beijing could escalate. It could do the usual things commentators speculate about. It could declare an air-defense identification zone, possibly corresponding to the zone within the nine-dashed line. Over time, enforcing such a zone could help consolidate its claim to indisputable sovereignty.

It could start island-building at Scarborough Shoal—much as it did at Mischief Reef starting in quieter times twenty years ago. If no one opposed its efforts effectively, China would have effectively hollowed out the law of the sea in Southeast Asia, and in highly public fashion. American sea power would have been proved impotent.

It could shift the scene of conflict to the East China Sea, where Chinese ships and aircraft wrangle with their Japanese counterparts around the Senkaku Islands. That would stretch the allies in an effort to cover all bases.

Or China could do something altogether unexpected. It excels at that.

What should contenders not named China do? Rival Southeast Asian claimants—Vietnam, Indonesia and so forth—should take heart from the Philippine example and file their own cases with the tribunal. One doubts Beijing will refuse to take part in future proceedings, considering how this one went. At a minimum, findings from the tribunal would amplify their legal and moral standing in the disputes.

And the United States? Over the past year or so, U.S. mariners and legal scholars have gone the rounds over the intricacies of freedom of the sea, including “innocent passage” through China’s “territorial sea”, that twelve-nautical-mile belt of sea that adjoins the mainland, islands that qualify as islands under the law of the sea, and rocks that are above sea level at all times.

Here’s an idea: as a guide to action, let’s jettison the adjective “innocent” in favor of “indecent”. Innocent passage seldom offends those who need to be offended. It does little for freedom of the sea, except in the trivial case when the coastal state imposes some extra burden on freedom of navigation—such as demanding advance notice from vessels before they cross through the territorial sea. Innocent passage deflates minor excesses at best.

Think bigger. Indecent passage would mean challenging every Chinese overreach, early and often. Its goal would be to prevent Beijing from abridging any maritime freedom guaranteed by treaty or customary international law. In the case of the Scarborough Shoals of the world, it would mean keeping China from changing the legal status of a maritime feature merely by altering its physical conformation—by piling sand on an atoll or submerged rock.

Mother Nature made Scarborough Shoal an undersea reef. It remains an undersea reef in the eyes of international law, entitled to no exclusive economic zone or territorial sea. Conveying that message is the point. So, even if China constructs an island on Scarborough Shoal, complete with runways or piers, American and allied strategy must insist that it’s entitled to zero control of the air and seas over or around it. Nada.

To uphold freedom of the sea, U.S. Navy and friendly ships and planes should exercise every prerogative to which they’re entitled by the law of the sea, in every square inch of airspace and waterspace where they’re entitled to exercise it. Airmen should conduct surveillance flights in immediate proximity to Scarborough Shoal and other contested features. Ships can lawfully conduct flight operations, underwater surveys and the like—check UNCLOS. They can loiter or even anchor there.

They should. Be indecent—and confound the lawless.

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 article first appeared in July 2016.

Image: Flickr.

Sebastien Roblin

Submarines, World

The U.S. Navy's Orca Robot Submarines could transform Naval Warfare. 

Here's What You Need to Know: Of course a manned, nuclear-powered attack submarine is overall more capable, has more context-sensitive human brains helming it, and can perform missions like deploying special operations forces that a drone submarine cannot. But for very dangerous—or even very lengthy and boring missions—drone submarines could prove an attractive alternative. 

At a military parade celebrating its 70th anniversary, the People’s Republic of China unveiled, amongst many other exotic weapons, two HSU-001 submarines—the world’s first large diameter autonomous submarines to enter military service.

The unarmed robot submarines visibly had communication masts and sonar aperture suggestive of their intended role as tireless underwater surveillance systems intended to report on the movements of warships and submarines of other navies in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

While the United States may not be the first to operationally drone a Large Diameter Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (LDUUV), it is not far behind with a slightly smaller sub Extra Large UUV. In February 2019, the Navy awarded Boeing a $274.4 million contract to build four (later increased to five) Orca autonomous vehicles, beating out a more elongated and cylindrical design proposed by Lockheed Martin. 

And the publicly available details on the Orca suggest it could prove a highly-capable platform that—unusually for new weapons technologies—is surprisingly cheap.

Meet the Echo Voyager

There aren’t too many specifications available on the Orca, but that’s not the case for the craft the Orca is derived from—Boeing’s Echo Voyager, which began testing in 2017. The Orca, like Voyager, will remain small enough to lower into the water at a pier, rather than requiring maintenance and replenishment in the water. 

The 50-ton Voyager was developed by Boeing’s PhantomWorks division, which is devoted to advanced new technologies, succeeding a series of smaller Echo Seeker and Echo Ranger UUVs. The 15.5-meter long Echo Voyager has a range of nearly 7,500 miles. It has also deployed at sea up to three months in a test, and theoretically could last as long as six months.

Supposedly, Voyager also can dive as deep as 3,350 meters—while few military submarines are (officially) certified for dives below 500 meters. 

On the other hand, Echo Voyager is no speedster with a maximum speed of 9 miles per hour, and a sustainable cruising speed of just 3 mph. It relies on a diesel-electric propulsion system. That means when the submarine begins to exhaust its lithium-ion batteries—which should occur roughly every two days at cruising speed—it rises near the surface and raises a snorkel to suck in air which can then be consumed by a diesel engine which recharges the batteries, drawing from a 1,000-gallon fuel supply.

For navigation, Voyager relies primarily on depth sensors and gyrometric inertial navigation system. However, when near the surface it can also raise a satellite mast to acquire more precise GPS coordinates.

Concept images of the Orca itself reveal that it appears very similar to Voyager except that it has a shrouded pump jet propulsor rather than a Voyager’s conventional propeller. That suggests the Orca will be quieter and possibly faster than its progenitor.

Underwater Killer Robots

Before the Navy began work on developing operational capabilities, it wanted its prototype to have achieved certain baseline characteristics: long endurance and power management, navigation and sensors for situational awareness, payload capacity, and above all, autonomy.

You’ve probably seen earlier remote-controlled scientific UUVs while watching marine life documentaries. But such unmanned vehicles needed to remain tethered to a ship on the surface so to maintain their control link and transmit video feeds back to their operators.

Unlike the Predator and Reaper drones, the long-range Orca submarine would by necessity be a truly autonomous system, meaning that while it would follow certain pre-programmed instructions, its artificial intelligence would be actively making decisions without human input. 

That’s by necessity, as it’s very difficult to maintain quality communications links through water. The Orcas may be programmed to rise close to the surface—either periodically or in response to certain trigger-conditions—to transmit updates, and receive new instructions from home base. But it couldn’t do that very long, or too frequently, if it wanted to remain undetected.

That means the Orca would have to be programmed to make its own decisions. Some of those decisions might be as innocuous (and necessary) as maneuvering to avoid collision with a ships or the sea floor. 

But for a combat-equipped Orca, those decisions would be as momentous as attempting to identify whether a sonar contact is friendly or hostile, and whether to engage it with weapons.

Still drone submarines are far from exhibiting the performance to “chase” enemy vessels—but they could conceivably be discretely prepositioned to ambush hostile ships and submarines.

A Submarine Drone for All Seasons

The Orca is meant to be a modular vehicle with capability-sets plugged into it according to operational needs.

A developmental planning chart from a Navy presentation reveals an extremely ambitious vision for the Navy’s new XLUUV. Initially, it is intended to integrate surveillance sensors and mine-laying capability—and foremost be used as a test bed to develop a Concept of Operations of how to routinely operate drone submarines.

But in later phases, the Orca XLUUV could evolve to carry mine-clearing devices, surveillance sensors, and even electronic warfare systems that track and disrupt enemy sensors and communications—though that would likely require operating close to the surface. 

Furthermore, it could acquire sensors and armament to perform anti-submarine, surface warfare (hunting enemy warships), and surface strike (presumably launching cruise missiles at land targets) missions.

Submarine expert H.I. Sutton wrote on his website that the Navy’s future combat XLUUVs may feature “up to twelve heavyweight [533-millimeter] tubes,” based on a Navy presentation appearing to show belly-mounted by with twelve downward-firing tubes. The Orca may also be able to mount weapons or support systems externally.

Sutton also speculates U.S. XLUUVs might have a role hunting down Russia’s forthcoming Poseidon intercontinental nuclear torpedoes—which could prove too fast and/or deep diving to easily intercept with manned submarines.

Whither the Manned Submarine?

The Navy’s Virginia-class attack submarines cost $2 to 2.4 billion—and the Navy’s successor to the Virginia will surely cost even more. The basic Orca is said to cost $43 million, though its price would surely rise substantially if outfitted with sensors and weapons.

Still, the Navy could theoretically procure many armed Orcas for the price of a single Virginia. And then it wouldn’t have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars over the years to train and sustain large crews to operate onboard those Orcas.

Of course a manned, nuclear-powered attack submarine is overall more capable (faster, stealthier due to not having to recharge batteries, can carry more weapons, etc.), has more context-sensitive human brains helming it, and can perform missions like deploying special operations forces that a drone submarine cannot.

But for very dangerous—or even very lengthy and boring missions—drone submarines could prove an attractive alternative. 

The Orca isn’t the only robot submarine in the work. A “fatter” Large Diameter UUV like the Chinese HSU-001, designed to be launched from surface warships or Virginia-class submarines, is also under development. The LDUUV would surveil and possibly hunt enemy forces within a closer radius to its mothership.

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 October 2019.

Image: Boeing Co. 

James Holmes

Brazil, Americas

The Americas’ external protector started withdrawing. American republics had to provide for their own defense, or go undefended.

Here's What You Need to Know: Brazil’s navy craves ships normally meant for conventional naval warfare—but it craves them for eccentric reasons. In one sense the Marinha resembles the U.S. Navy after World War I, which is when imperial Germany had been vanquished but no competitor had yet taken its place as the focal point of U.S. naval strategy.

“We have no concept of war,” confides a strategy professor at the Escola de Guerra Naval, or Brazilian Naval War College, in Rio de Janeiro—my home-away-from-home for part of 2018 and a place that unsucks, as the great Anthony Bourdain might say. Say what? Navies are fighting forces. They exist to duel rival navies. A navy that confronts no prospect of war is a force without purpose or direction. It’s rudderless.

Right?

Well, not exactly. The Marinha do Brasil, or Brazilian Navy, has more work to do than it can do. It is far from purposeless. But its work is noncombat work for the most part. That’s because Brazil has the good fortune to inhabit what Pentagon denizens call “permissive,” non-menacing strategic surroundings. The South Atlantic is free of great-power enmity. A friendly superpower navy, the U.S. Navy, furnishes a backstop should things abruptly go awry.

For the time being, anyway. The strategic setting as it exists today governs the service’s outlook. The naval leadership should cultivate what geopolitics maven Robert Kaplan terms “anxious foresight” about the future—and prepare accordingly.

Rather than gird to battle rival navies, the Brazilian Navy has long dedicated itself to constabulary duty. In effect it’s a super empowered coast guard, a combat service whose chief occupations consist of enforcing domestic law, guarding offshore natural resources from poachers, and helping Africans suppress piracy.

Concentrating on police duty makes perfect sense from Brasilia’s standpoint. If battle against high-seas foes appears far-fetched—if a navy has no concept of war but needs none—few governments would waste finite financial, material and human resources on preparing for it. The upshot: the Brazilian Navy dwells in a different strategic and mental universe from the U.S. Navy, and from any sea service that readies itself for war first and executes constabulary missions on a not-to-interfere basis with war preparations.

Countries, institutions and individuals oftentimes inhabit different mental worlds. Analyst Robert Kagan once penned a tract opining that Europeans hailed from Venus while Americans were from Mars. The United States, noted Kagan, spearheaded Europe’s defense throughout the Cold War. Europeans came to believe that security was something others supplied. They even insisted that a world ruled by international law and institutions had arrived. For them martial history had ended. If force no longer had any use, it made sense to disarm. And so they did, more or less—leaving themselves even more reliant on superpower protection.

However congenial the strategic environment appears, inhabitants of the South Atlantic should refuse to succumb to such illusions. History may yet call on Brazil to play its part in South Atlantic or hemispheric defense. It should make itself ready in intellectual and material terms.

The prospect of armed conflict is easy to overlook amid tranquil surroundings. As seagoing constables, Brazilian mariners track down non-state scourges rather than confront hostile armadas. Poachers infesting national fishing grounds constitute a particular irritant. Indeed, Brazil’s last nautical “war” was the “Lobster War” against France in the early 1960s.

The controversy broke out after French fishermen took to scooping up spiny lobsters skittering along the Brazilian continental shelf about one hundred nautical miles offshore. Brasilia mounted a show of naval force off its coasts, and Paris agreed to curtail fishing in this offshore preserve. Yet memories of the Lobster War linger—and color Brazilian maritime strategy half a century hence. They affirm the navy’s constabulary focus.

Brazilian commanders also fret about protecting natural resources underneath the seafloor. Like most coastal states, Brazil now claims an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) reaching two hundred nautical miles off its shorelines. Brasilia recently added a northerly sliver of the continental shelf, which extends still farther out to sea, to what officialdom styles the Amazônia Azul, or “Blue Amazon”—the seaward extension of the Amazon River basin.

The leadership now wants to bump out its EEZ to the south, incorporating even more marine territory into the Blue Amazon. That adds up to a lot of sea space for the Brazilian Navy to patrol. Nor are waterborne challenges all offshore. Indeed, Brazil’s navy looks inward to degree rare among navies. It’s not just a coastal or oceangoing force but a riverine force with distended inland waterways and adjacent shores to oversee. This is no small chore.

Rivers are usually a blessing. Alfred Thayer Mahan touted the Mississippi River and its tributaries for putting the interior of North America in contact with oceanic commerce. Maritime geography made it easy to ship export goods from the continental interior to foreign buyers. But the muddy Mississippi is wide and, in general, friendly to navigation. The Amazon River is no Mississippi. In some places switchbacks are so tortuous that the river is barely navigable, even for experienced riverboat skippers.

Worse, Brazilian seafarers report that the Amazon watercourse has a perverse habit of shifting from year to year. Shapeshifting terrain plays havoc with inland traffic. But because overland transport between coastal Brazil and the interior remains even more tenuous, the navy acts as the government’s humanitarian arm in the backcountry. Naval vessels commonly render medical care, for example. U.S. Navy craft seldom provide such services at home except after natural disasters—after a Hurricane Katrina or Maria. For the Marinha it’s a matter of routine.

Nor do the challenges stop with the EEZ, continental shelf, and internal waters. Despite their homeward mandate, Brazilian sailors do look beyond their maritime near abroad. But they defy expectations even when they do. Look at the map. Sea lanes transiting the region flow mainly north-south. Merchantmen and warships steam hither and yon between Atlantic seaports and the Pacific or Indian oceans, rounding Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope along their way.

By contrast, Brazilians’ mental map of the South Atlantic has an east-west orientation to it. They gaze mainly eastward toward Africa, where pirates prey on shipping in the Gulf of Guinea. The horizontal axis to Brazilian strategy is at right-angles to vertical shipping patterns.

It’s doubtful the contagion of maritime brigandage will spread westward across the Atlantic Ocean to afflict South America. So why—when the navy has plenty to do at home—would Brasilia go to the effort of attacking piracy at its source, and far from Brazilian coastlines? Multiple motives drive Brazil, like all societies. Accepting partial custodianship of the regional maritime order lets the Brazilian Navy portray itself as a South Atlantic force for good while preventing corsairs from distorting regional shipping lanes—and perhaps driving insurance rates so high that shipping firms reroute commercial traffic around the area.

The business of seagoing peoples is business. Suppressing lawlessness that imperils trade, commerce, and resource extraction represents sound strategic logic and helps Brasilia burnish its image as a responsible steward of South Atlantic security. What’s not to like?

Naval officialdom has made some peculiar fleet-design choices as it strives to discharge its mandate to enforce sovereignty, render social services and quash piracy. To name one, the Marinha and its political masters consider aircraft carriers a cornerstone of maritime strategy. Brasilia recently decommissioned its French-built flattop São Paulo, only to strike a bargain with British leaders to replace it with the retired amphibious carrier HMS Ocean.

Brazilian naval commanders regard flattops not as capital ships or platforms for storming hostile beaches, but as roving airfields for policing the Blue Amazon. They aren’t high-value units in carrier or amphibious expeditionary groups. They roam the sea without the familiar retinue of cruisers, destroyers, and submarines to ward off an aerial, surface, or subsurface attack. Corvettes and kindred small combatants comprise the bulk of the surface fleet.

In short, surface groups in the South Atlantic are different creatures from those in the Western Pacific or Mediterranean Sea. It’s jarring for those of us representing battle-minded navies to see pictures of a Brazilian flattop cruising with few if any sentry vessels alongside to stand guard. That’s a fleet begging to get pummeled!

Except it’s not. Thankfully.

Don’t get me wrong: aircraft carriers of humble scale do make sense for constabulary work. In fact, a flotilla of winsome “sea-control ships” resembling those envisaged for the U.S. Navy in the 1970s would fit the Marinha do Brasil’s peacetime needs better than the two fifty-thousand-ton behemoths naval proponents reportedly covet. In all likelihood a clutch of helicopters or jump jets flying from multiple light carriers dispersed offshore would provide better geographic coverage than would a bigger air wing operating from a single flight deck. After all, even the largest flight deck can only be in one place at a time.

And if Brasilia sees no need to fight for mastery of the South Atlantic, then it has little need for flattops larger than World War II fleet carriers. Why invest heavily in capital ships when lesser ones will do?

Another idiosyncrasy: the naval leadership wants a flotilla of nuclear-powered attack subs (SSNs). Again, though, it wants them for reasons alien to the U.S. Navy. (Brazil’s navy will be lucky to get so much as one attack boat any time soon. Scandal has engulfed the Brazilian presidency, throttled the nation’s GDP, and forced drastic cuts to the defense budget. Check out Netflix for a fictionalized account of this sorry affair that Brazilians are watching.)

There are advantages to such an acquisition. Nuclear propulsion grants SSNs virtually boundless seakeeping ability, letting them prowl their patrol grounds for months at a time. Long on-station times explain SSNs’ allure with Brazilian navalists. However, it remains unclear precisely what they expect a nuclear-attack boat to do after detecting unlawful fishing, drilling, or undersea mining. If patrol craft are constables who tote nightsticks, then SSNs are infantrymen who brandish battle-axes meant to split skulls.

Clobbering a fishing boat with torpedoes and anti-ship missiles, typical submarine armament, would amount to overkill—and pricey overkill at that.

Bottom line, Brazil’s navy craves ships normally meant for conventional naval warfare—but it craves them for eccentric reasons. In one sense the Marinha resembles the U.S. Navy after World War I, which is when imperial Germany had been vanquished but no competitor had yet taken its place as the focal point of U.S. naval strategy. In 1919 Captain Harry Yarnell quipped that trying to design a fleet with no enemy in sight is like forging a machine tool without knowing whether its users intend to manufacture hairpins or locomotives.

In other words, strategic drift prevails when a service has no foe to impart direction to force design and operations. But there is an upside to Brazilians’ offbeat fascination with high-end carriers and subs: if the navy ever needs a concept of war, then some of the platforms needed to put a warlike concept into practice will already reside in the inventory. The navy can and should experiment with them, honing battle doctrine and skill lest more forbidding times come.

As they may. Perpetual peace has not come to the South Atlantic any more than it came to Europe under U.S. military protection. In reality Brazil is enjoying a holiday from history courtesy of the U.S. Navy—a silent partner in its maritime defense.

And there’s justice to that: the United States free-rode on maritime security furnished by Great Britain’s Royal Navy for most of the nineteenth century, and benefited immensely from the respite from great-power rivalry. The republic was able to subdue a continent, fight its civil war, and foster an industrial revolution precisely because British naval mastery staved off predatory empires—sparing Washington from fielding a pricey navy or army to defend its shores and interests.

Resources that might have gone into a large standing military went to economic development, or stayed in private hands. Industry flourished.

But the lesson of the nineteenth-century United States for twenty-first-century Brazil is this: holidays don’t last forever. Use them well.

British maritime supremacy came under duress toward the nineteenth century’s end. The advent of new industrial powers—Germany, Japan, the United States—cut into Britain’s material advantage. And when one of those competitors, imperial Germany, decided to construct a great battle fleet hard by the British Isles, the leadership in London felt compelled to being warships home from the Far East and Western Hemisphere.

The Americas’ external protector started withdrawing. American republics had to provide for their own defense, or go undefended.

Starting in the 1880s, happily, the United States had laid the keels for its first steam-propelled, armored, big-gun fleet. The U.S. Navy took up the burden of maritime security as the Royal Navy drew down its American Station and went home to run its arms race against Germany. By the dawn of the twentieth century Washington had built up a surplus of naval might that enabled it to guarantee nautical freedom in the Western Hemisphere.

It could do all this because London had given it a holiday from history.

But the surplus of U.S. sea power could prove perishable, like all things. China’s rise, Russian troublemaking, and sundry Eurasian challenges now beckon U.S. attention, policy energy, and martial resources to distant waters and shores. Whereas German sea power pulled the Royal Navy home, great-power mischief-making siphons U.S. naval power away from home. Eurasian adventures could expose the Americas to fresh dangers in their naval protector’s absence.

So, Brazil, by all means experiment with aircraft carriers and nuclear-powered subs. You may need them—along with a concept of how to use them in combat. Hemispheric defense could use a joint custodian under all circumstances, not just congenial ones.

Enjoy Venus—but spend some time on Mars.

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 in May 2018.

Image: Wikipedia.

Michael Peck

Helicopters, Eurasia

The Mi-28NM indicates that Russia continues to improve its attack helicopter capabilities.

Here's What You Need to Know: The Mi-28NM is part of Russia’s plan to modernize its attack helicopters. “In addition to the Mi-28NM, it will also touch the MI-35 series,” Izvestia says. “This year, the program for upgrading Mi-35M helicopters to Mi-35MV starts: new armor, engines and long-range optics will be installed on them, which will allow them to find targets and destroy them at any time of day and in any weather at a distance of several kilometers.

Prowling the skies of Syria is the “Night Superhunter.”

It’s not a comic book superhero, but the newest Russian attack helicopter.

The Mi-28NM, the latest upgrade of the Mi-28 (NATO code name “Havoc”), is equipped with advanced sensors that enable it to conduct night operations, according to Russia’s Izvestia newspaper.

“The main novelty of the Mi-28NM is the N025E radar, which was previously installed only on export models,” Izvestia says. “The antenna receiving and transmitting part of the radar is located above the rotor of the helicopter. From the side it looks like a ball - it is a special fairing made of radio-permeable material. Such an arrangement of the radar gives a circular view, and also allows you to receive a radar image of the terrain, hiding in uneven terrain behind artificial and natural obstacles while remaining invisible to the enemy. On the battlefield, the radar station can effectively operate from ambush, the first to strike unexpected blows at the enemy.”

The Mi-28, the successor to the chunkier Cold War Mi-24 Hind and the counterpart of the Apache, is an early 1980s design. The Mi-28N debuted in the 1990s, with the NM model its latest iteration. The 9-ton Mi-28NM has a top speed of 300 kilometers per hour (186 miles per hour), a range of 450 kilometers (280 miles), and can carry 2,300 kilograms (5,100 pounds) of ordnance, according to Izvestia. Armament includes a 30-millimeter cannon, 9M120 Ataka anti-tank missiles, and rocket pods.

Significantly, given Russia’s recent willingness to deploy military force abroad, the Izvestia article emphasized that the Mi-28NM’s VK-2500P-01/PS engine can operate in harsh climates: “New design solutions guarantee reliable operation in areas not only with a temperate climate, but also in desert areas with high temperatures, as well as in conditions of high mountains, such as, for example, in Syria.”

In addition, the newest Havoc has networking capabilities. “Electronics will allow pilots to receive target designations from advanced aircraft designers and intelligence units, which will greatly increase the effectiveness of interaction with ground forces, since the detected targets can be destroyed almost instantly,” says Izvestia.

The Mi-28NM is part of Russia’s plan to modernize its attack helicopters. “In addition to the Mi-28NM, it will also touch the MI-35 series,” Izvestia says. “This year, the program for upgrading Mi-35M helicopters to Mi-35MV starts: new armor, engines and long-range optics will be installed on them, which will allow them to find targets and destroy them at any time of day and in any weather at a distance of several kilometers. Helicopters will also receive an electronic warfare system and protection from man-portable air defense systems. The new equipment will turn the helicopter into a modern flying airborne assault vehicle.”

What’s interesting is how much of the technology touted by Izvestia is commonplace in Western militaries. For example, since the late 1990s, the U.S. AH-64D Apache Longbow has had a radar mounted to the top of its mast (the vertical shaft to which the rotor is attached). Tactical networking, in which a vehicle or aircraft can pass on targeting data to another platform that launches a missile, is also common. U.S. Apaches have sophisticated radar and thermal sensors for nocturnal operations.

Still, the Mi-28NM indicates that Russia continues to improve its attack helicopter capabilities.

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

This article first appeared in July 2019.

Image: Wikipedia.

Sebastien Roblin

Helicopter Carriers, Japan

Meet the Izumo -- the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force's largest ship. 

Here's What You Need to Know: The distinction between helicopter carriers and aircraft carriers remains dubious. 

Meet the Izumo—the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force’s largest ship, displacing a gargantuan twenty-seven thousand tons. The vessel’s lengthy, flat deck measures the length of two-and-a-half football fields at 248-meters. The Izumo typically hosts seven SH-60K helicopters designed to comb the seas for hostile submarines, plus another two search-and-rescue models—though it can carry as many as twenty-eight choppers if necessary. The Izumo also has several elevators to lower the helicopters to an internal hangar deck.

But by no means call the Izumo an aircraft carrier. She, and her sister ship the Kaga, commissioned in 2017, are “helicopter destroyers.”

This distinction is especially dubious because unlike the predecessor of the Izumo-class, the Hyūga-class, which was armed with torpedoes and medium-range anti-aircraft and anti-submarine missiles, the Izumo does not carry any longer-range weapon systems to perform regular “destroyer” roles. Its only armament is a couple of short-range Phalanx and SeaRAM self-defense systems designed to shoot down incoming missiles seconds before they impact.

Yet the distinction remains because—at least until recently—the consensus in Tokyo was that “carriers” are offensive weapon systems, and offensive weapons are forbidden to Japan’s Self-Defense Forces by Article 9 of its constitution.

Though the distinction between “offensive” and “defensive” weapon systems is arguably a bit arbitrary—aggressive powers still need to defend themselves, defensive powers may want offensive weapons for deterrence or counterattack—there’s no denying that carriers can and have been used as floating airbases to wage offensive wars on foreign countries.

Japan, in fact, is the original pioneer of carrier warfare. At the beginning of World War I, a Japanese cruiser lowered ship-based floatplanes into the water to fly the first naval air strike in history against a German cruiser. (The British Royal Navy, however, was the first to combat deploy a carrier with a flight deck for the Tondern raid in 1918.) The Imperial Japanese Navy went on to develop a large carrier arm during the 1920s and 1930s and used them to deliver the devastating surprise attack that knocked out American battleships at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. That formidable force only met its first major defeat battling U.S. Navy flat-tops in the Battle of Midway, and then its pilots and fleet carriers bled away in a series of costly engagements between 1942 and 1944.

However, carriers aren’t confined to offensive roles. They can deploy fighters to protect friendly surface ships and bases from attack, or dispatch patrol planes and helicopters to scout out the position of hostile ships and submarines. The Japanese military is particularly concerned with its ability to defend distant islands on the southwestern end of its archipelago such as the disputed Senkaku  Islands (called the Diaoyu by China) and the Ryuku Islands, which include Okinawa. These islands are hundreds of miles away from the central Japanese home islands, complicating efforts to defend them by air or take them back from invaders.

Of course, while helicopter carriers are highly effective at hunting submarines—and as such are essentially defensive in nature—they aren’t useful for providing air cover or ground support. But it just so happens that Japanese ship designers discretely designed the Izumo-class to be capable of supporting jump jets, which can lift off over very short distances, or even vertically like a helicopter.

Japan doesn’t currently have any jump jets—but reports indicate it is actively looking into acquiring a highly capable type. The U.S. Marine Corps operates an F-35B Lightning II jump jet model designed to fly from small amphibious carriers—a type that saw its first combat test in Afghanistan on September 27, 2018. Japan hasn’t bought any F-35Bs yet, but it is license-building forty-two conventional F-35As.

The F-35 boasts excellent stealth characteristics and computers but is a bit inferior in terms of traditional flight performance parameters (speed and maneuverability) when compared to fourth-generation fighters. However, the F-35B has a far superior performance to preceding jump jets like the Harrier and Yak-38. Though slower than a traditional air superiority interceptor, the Lightning’s powerful sensors and low-observable characteristics would make it a very sneaky stalker of otherwise faster and more maneuverable adversaries. This means the F-35 is able to pick off enemy aircraft with long-range missiles and then dart away before being detected.

Already, in May 2018, Tokyo released portions of a study concluding the Izumo and Kaga could be used to carry U.S. Marine jets assisting in the defense of Japanese soil. Earlier, however, a Japanese newspaper revealed that the government of Shinzo Abe has drawn up plans to—and evaluated the substantial cost of—acquiring as many as forty F-35Bs for the Japanese Air Self Defense force to replace aging F-15Js. Although F-35Bs are appealing because their lift fans would allow them to operate from the shorter civilian airfields of remote Japanese islands, Tokyo has also studied the cost of modifying the Izumo-class carriers to accommodate up to ten of them at a time.

Such modifications would entail heat-resistant paint to the decks, as an F-35B’s vertical lift fans generate such intense heat they could threaten to damage the deck! However, some sources claim that the decks were treated with such paint early on—giving an idea of how the designers of the Izumo-class were thinking well ahead of the possibility of transforming “helicopter destroyer” into a full-fledged aircraft carrier. The Izumo-class, however, would also need to incorporate a ski-jump-style ramp to assist the Harrier in making short takeoff runs, as vertical takeoffs burns excessive fuel and still damage the deck excessively.

Yet overtly operating fixed-wing aircraft from carriers is a domestically sensitive matter to the pacifistically-inclined Japanese—as well as to Beijing. Though China has dramatically expanded its own carrier aviation capabilities in recent years—the PLA Navy has gone from zero to two mid-sized carriers in the last five years, and plans to phase in four more by the mid-2020s—Beijing has already complained about the Izumo-classes capabilities, arguing that Japanese carriers betray a warlike intent.

Undeniably, a return to Japanese carrier aviation would carry a historical association with Imperial Japan’s naval prowess—and ruthless deeds—prior to and during World War II. However, that doesn’t mean a couple ships carrying around a dozen jet fighters herald an aggressive foreign policy. Other countries like Brazil have operated carriers without using them in expansionist campaigns. For a wealthy island nation like Japan, operating a few carriers to help defend its far-flung islands and patrol its seas makes abundant sense.

However, the issue will remain emotionally fraught both in Japan and China—which explains why though the concept has clearly been mulled since the Izumo-class was first designed, discussion of the possibility has been veiled by terminology such as ‘helicopter destroyer.’ However, as Japan’s conservative ruling party pursues new records in defense spending to balance China’s expanding naval power, its interest in operating jump jets from carriers seems likely to increasingly go from implicit to explicit.

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 October 2018 and is being republished due to reader interest. 

Image: Creative Commons "File:JS Izumo (DDH-183) just after her launch.jpg" by Dragoner JP is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Stephen Silver

Social Security,

It isn’t only seniors, or even adults, who need to worry about their Social Security numbers being stolen by thieves, scammers and fraudsters.

Here's What You Need to Remember: In many cases, the fraudster will create a “synthetic identity,” with the minor’s stolen Social Security number, which they can use to do numerous things that the child probably hadn’t, such as open a bank account, open a credit card, apply for a job, request or collect government benefits, file fraudulent tax returns, or sell the stolen identity.

It isn’t only seniors, or even adults, who need to worry about their Social Security numbers being stolen by thieves, scammers and fraudsters.

That’s according to a press release put out this week by myFICO, a division of the company behind FICO credit scores. It cited a story from 2018, showing that “over a million children were the victims of identity fraud” the year before, with most of those victims seven years old or younger at the time of the fraud.

“Whether you're a new parent (congratulations!) or have teenagers in the house (good luck), keeping their information secure should also be a priority. And as children head back to school, you may want to think twice about what information you're sharing.”

MyFICO also said that fraudsters in some cases are someone the child knows, who gained access to their Social Security number.

“A minor can't open a loan or credit card on their own,” the release said. "But the lack of information in their credit history could be beneficial to fraudsters. In a sense, they're clean slates. Plus, parents rarely try to check their child's credit, which means the fraud might not be detected right away.”

In many cases, the fraudster will create a “synthetic identity,” with the minor’s stolen Social Security number, which they can use to do numerous things that the child probably hadn’t, such as open a bank account, open a credit card, apply for a job, request or collect government benefits, file fraudulent tax returns, or sell the stolen identity.

Parents are also advised to be on the watch for suspicious mail that shouldn’t be going to a child, such as credit card solicitations, traffic tickets, and letters from the government claiming that the Social Security number is already in use by someone else.

Parents are also told by myFICO that they should limit what they share about their children online, secure their private documents, check whether their children have credit accounts, and letting the children themselves know to protect their identities.

“If you or your child are victims of identity theft or fraud, know that you're not alone,” the release said. “Resolving the issue can be difficult, but you can report the crime and get a recovery plan from the Federal Trade Commission on IdentityTheft.gov. In addition, if you are a member when the fraud occurs, myFICO's credit and identity-monitoring plans include identity restoration services and identity theft insurance policies that may be able to help.”

It is worth noting that myFICO shares this advice from a position of being a company that sells services meant to prevent such calamities.

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

Image: Reuters.

Michael Peck

U.S. Military,

Navy subs will become giant batteries, supplying juice to power-hungry lasers, or underwater platforms, or equipment used by special operations forces.

Here's What You Need to Know: “Above the water, a 100-300 kilowatt laser would be powerful enough to destroy small UAVs, damage larger aircraft, damage optical sensors, or defeat slow anti-ship missiles,” Clark says. “Underwater, a laser could be used for communications, but that would only work at specific frequency ranges and would require much lower power levels.”

Will U.S. Navy submarines be armed with laser weapons?

That’s the implication of a new Navy research project.

At first glance, the project seems fairly routine engineering: developing connectors that will allow transmission of hundreds of kilowatts of electricity through a submarine’s hull.

But what’s interesting is what all that electricity will be used for. “The Navy seeks technologies for transmitting high electrical power required for operating Directed Energy (DE) weapon systems from inboard the submarine to an outboard DE system, submersible platform, special operation, etc.,” states the research proposal.

In other words, Navy subs will become giant batteries, supplying juice to power-hungry lasers, or underwater platforms, or equipment used by special operations forces. But first, the Navy must develop an electrical connector embedded in the sub’s hull. “Currently, the Navy needs to tow the generator to support a similar system,” the proposal notes.

Yet the fact that the proposal mentions an “outboard” directed energy weapon is interesting. “By ‘outboard,’ the proposal could mean a system attached externally to the submarine, but that is only connected to the inside of the submarine via external hull penetrators,” says Bryan Clark, a former Navy submarine officer who is now an analyst for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments think tank. “These penetrators are electrical connectors that provide an electrical circuit between the inside and outside of the submarine, but that are built into the hull so cables do not need to pass through the hull.”

This would allow an external laser to be mounted on the submarine. “A laser could be mounted to the submarine outside the pressure hull,” Clark says. “For example, it could be in the sail, which is normally flooded when the submarine is submerged. Mounting in the sail could allow the laser to be used above the water to dazzle optical sensors or damage manned or unmanned aircraft.”

Other possibilities include a mast-mounted laser. “Either the laser could be in a mast or it could be in the sail and the sub would have to surface at least partially,” Clark explains. “As opposed to a gun or missile, a laser can be configured such that the laser generator is vertically aligned along the inside of the mast, and the laser light could be sent to the beam director via mirrors.”

Indeed, Optical Physics Company, a California-based technology firm, has designed a beam director—which steers the beam toward the target—for a mast-mounted submarine laser. “OPC has designed such a beam director with the right form factor for insertion into a submarine mast,” says the description on the company’s Web site. “This beam director can track the target and aim an approximately 12-inch diameter beam onto the target. The beam director can optionally contain adaptive optics components to condition the wavefront of the HEL [high energy laser] beam and compensate for the atmospheric distortions that reduce beam effectiveness in a maritime environment.”

If the Navy can develop electrical hull connectors, power generation and other systems needed for a submarine-mounted laser weapon, the potential could be enormous. A stealthy submarine emerging from the depths to fire a surprise laser shot could be devastating.

“Above the water, a 100-300 kilowatt laser would be powerful enough to destroy small UAVs, damage larger aircraft, damage optical sensors, or defeat slow anti-ship missiles,” Clark says. “Underwater, a laser could be used for communications, but that would only work at specific frequency ranges and would require much lower power levels.”

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: Flickr.

Stephen Silver

Technology, Americas

This is not the first breach suffered by T-Mobile customers within the past several years.

T-Mobile admitted this week that it recently suffered a breach in which the data of more than 40 million current, former or prospective customers was exposed. 

The theft included the Social Security numbers of its customers, according to Vice.   

T-Mobile said in a statement Tuesday that “we have been urgently investigating the highly sophisticated cyberattack against T-Mobile systems, and in an effort to keep our customers and other stakeholders informed we are providing the latest information we have on this event and some additional details.”  

The carrier was made aware last week that a “bad actor” had “compromised T-Mobile systems.” The company then brought in what it called “ world-leading cybersecurity experts” in order to investigate the matter.

“Yesterday, we were able to verify that a subset of T-Mobile data had been accessed by unauthorized individuals. We also began coordination with law enforcement as our forensic investigation continued,” T-Mobile’s announcement said. “While our investigation is still underway and we continue to learn additional details, we have now been able to confirm that the data stolen from our systems did include some personal information.” 

While T-Mobile confirmed that the data included the names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and drivers’ license and ID information, it did not include any “customer financial information, credit card information, debit or other payment information.” In addition, the hack does not appear to have affected any “phone numbers, account numbers, PINs, passwords, or financial information.” 

The total damage was that the stolen files included the information of 7.8 million of T-Mobile’s current postpaid customers, per the announcement. In addition, “40 million records of former or prospective customers who had previously applied for credit with T-Mobile” were stolen.  

T-Mobile has confirmed that about 850,000 “active T-Mobile prepaid customer names, phone numbers and account PINs” were exposed in the hack as well.  

In order to make it up to their customers, T-Mobile is offering customers a full two years of free identity protection services, via McAfee’s ID Theft Protection Service. In addition, the company is recommending that all of their postpaid customers change their PIN numbers, either by going online or contacting their Customer Care team. The company also plans to publish a unique website dealing with the issue. 

This is not the first breach suffered by T-Mobile customers within the past several years. As noted by the Wall Street Journal, more than fifteen million T-Mobile subscribers were affected by the 2015 Experian breach, while T-Mobile itself suffered two more, smaller breaches in 2020. 

T-Mobile and Sprint completed their merger last year.

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

Image: Reuters

Sebastien Roblin

Aircraft Carriers, Europe

Getting France and Germany to agree on such a vision has proven a true endeavor.

Here's What You Need to Know: All in all, a European carrier will only come about in a world where Germany is willing and able to commit far more resources to defense than it currently does.

(This article first appeared in October 2019.)

While discussing France and Germany’s joint development with France of the FCAS sixth-generation stealth fighter in March 2019, the new head of Germany’s governing CDU party Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer raised eyebrows with her suggestion of a chaser.

“As a next step, we could start the symbolic project of building an aircraft carrier to give shape to the role of the European Union as a global force for security and peace.”

German chancellor Angela Merkel endorsed the idea a few days later.

 “It’s right and good that we have such equipment on the European side, and I’m happy to work on it.”

Between Brexit and the increasingly erratic foreign policy of the United States, Berlin and Paris believe they need to move forward in building not only a common European security policy, but even common European forces.

But many commentators were scornful of the concept, pointing out that Germany is struggling to maintain the size and readiness of its current forces and remains well below the 2 percent of GDP guideline on defense spending.

How on Earth could Germany find the money and political will to field an entirely new and highly expensive platform like an aircraft carrier?

But What Do the French Think?

Notably, no officials in France subsequently jumped on board with the idea.

In May, French defense minister Florence Parly remarked in a TV interview “I don’t think we’re quite there yet. We first have to think about what kind of circumstances would a European aircraft carrier get used.

“It’s one thing to build a few carriers, it’s another to put them under European command.  That’s a lot more complicated . . . . We’re not quite there yet, though we’ve made enormous progress."

Parly’s statement clarifies that Paris perceives Kramp-Karrenbauer’s idea as being about jointly operating a ‘European’ carrier, rather than merely cooperating on the development and construction and then deploying them in separate navies. 

That makes sense.  Germany has never operated an aircraft carrier before, though it planned building or converting six different carriers between 1915–1942 and even launched one, the Graf Zeppelin, before construction was canceled in 1942.

By contrast, France is currently the only country besides the United States to field a nuclear-powered, catapult-equipped flat-deck aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle which can carry three squadrons of highly capable Rafale fighters. (China and maybe India will join the catapult-equipped carrier club in the 2020s.)

This leaves us with Parly’s tricky question: Could France and Germany agree on how to use an aircraft carrier?

The German public is generally disposed against military intervention abroad. The German Navy’s primary mission is to patrol the confined waters of the Baltic Sea against threatened Russian incursions, particularly from submarines.  As land-based aircraft possess more than enough range to patrol the Baltic, a large aircraft carrier would be vulnerable and bring little to the table in such a theater, though a smaller helicopter carrier might be useful.

France, by contrast, believes it has a global mission, and its forces have been heavily engaged in combat operations in Africa and the Middle East. It thus values the expeditionary ability of an aircraft carrier to support political and military projects distant from French shores. 

For example, after the 9/11 attack, French Rafale fighters and Super Etendard bombers flew from Charles de Gaulle to assist the American intervention in Afghanistan.

Thus, for France and Germany to jointly operate a carrier, they must reach an understanding on how that carrier would be used.  And the main raison d’etre of a large carrier is expeditionary operations.

One option left undiscussed is the procurement of smaller and cheaper helicopter and jump jet carrier like those operated by the Italian and Spanish navies. Though such vessels are very versatile, the smaller number of embarked jump jets cannot sustain the same sortie throughput as a larger, catapult-equipped carrier.

More importantly, the U.S. is the only country building new jump jets—the F-35B stealth jet—and Paris and Berlin only want to procure European systems.

A New French Carrier . . . Or Two?

In 2018, France seeded forty million euros to begin an eighteen-month design study for the successor of the Charles de Gaulle. The new flattop should come in the 2030s or 2040s and serve through 2080.

Paris will want a vessel compatible with FCAS—both the New Generation Fighter and various Remote Carrier drones designed to support it.  If finances permit, then Paris might consider the construction of two carriers as the UK recently did with its two Queen Elizabeth-class carriers.  That way, one can always be available while the other undergoes maintenance and overhauls. 

Developing and then building carriers is immensely expensive. The United States is spending well over $10 billion per ship for its new Gerald Ford-class supercarriers. Thus, the idea of getting a partner with additional funding to contribute for development and procurement might be attractive. One French commentator argues that German investment in a second carrier could even create a sort of “naval Airbus” consortium.

But in May French Adm. Jean-Philippe Rolland told a French defense commission that talking about joint-construction of a European carrier is approaching the concept backward.

“For various reasons, it’s tricky to build a ‘shared’ carrier, as each country has its own cultural specificities,” he said.

Instead, he thought it more realistic to create a sort of European Carrier Air Wing.

“We would have to start by forming a European air-naval group—which would not necessarily mean the aircraft carrier itself would be European . . . A European carrier air group seems most realistic.  All  the more, because Charles de Gaulle already routinely is escorted by European ships.”

Examples of squadrons ‘studying abroad’ on the decks U.S. carriers abound, including French Rafale-Ms onboard the U.S. carrier USS George H.W. Bush in 2018.  

Still, Roland acknowledges the difficulty of building enough consensus to make operational cooperation feasible. “When we’ve managed coalitions under the NATO or UN banner, we’ve often run into restrictions, caveats, in which the most sensible rules of engagement were not authorized by various participating nations.”

As unity of command is vital for ships at sea, a multinational carrier would need to work out very solid protocols to avoid a scenario where some of its personnel or combat squadrons are committed to a particular mission, while others abstain due to conflicting policies from their country of origin. 

Even without larger political issues in play, creating a command structure and training mechanism in which personnel originating from different countries can be fused together under one command would be a challenging task—though not impossible, as shown by the formation of EU land units like Eurocorps and the Franco-German brigade.

All in all, a European carrier will only come about in a world where Germany is willing and able to commit far more resources to defense than it currently does; and can arrive at a joint vision with France on how to use such an expensive vessel to project force abroad.  That’s not the world we live in yet.

Still, certain rare ingredients are on the table to support a European carrier scheme. France will certainly develop and build at least one new carrier in the next two decades, which means an order for a second carrier is not impossible to imagine. And Germany and France are currently set on developing a sixth-generation fighter/drone combination that could be deployed on it.

Overall, Admiral Roland’s suggestion of a multinational carrier air wing seems a more reasonable starting point: rather than fielding a carrier, could Germany deploy a squadron or two that can fly off one?

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 October 2019.

Image: Creative Commons

Michael Peck

MiG-25, Eurasia

Forget being imprisoned in cattle class on a Boeing 747, your knees jammed into your face for eight hours. Think New York to London in two. That’s traveling in style.

Here's What You Need to Know: The MiG-25 needed lots of maintenance, especially of its engines. Most likely a business jet would have ferried only senior officials, who would have appreciated the convenience and ignored the cost. No doubt it would also have been popular with its flight and ground crews. The Foxbat was dubbed “Flying Restaurant” by Soviet personnel who enjoyed partaking of the 132 gallons of pure alcohol needed for braking, cooling and de-icing.

The Soviet MiG-25 Foxbat was many things. An interceptor, reconnaissance aircraft and a fast, high-altitude, record-setting bogeyman that scared the pants off Western air forces in the 1970s.

But a MiG-25 business jet? Coffee, tea or vodka served by an Aeroflot stewardess at 60,000 feet, the Earth below hurtling past your window at three times the speed of sound? Forget being imprisoned in cattle class on a Boeing 747, your knees jammed into your face for eight hours. Think New York to London in two. That’s traveling in style.

The idea never got off the drawing board. But it was under serious consideration, according to Yefim Gordon and Sergey Komissarov, authors of Unflown Wings: Unbuilt Soviet/Russian Aircraft Projects Since 1925.

The aircraft would have carried five to seven passengers or up to 2,000 pounds of cargo at a cruising speed of Mach 2.35—that’s 1,552 miles per hour. MiG would have lengthened the wings as well as added extra fuel capacity to extend passenger jet’s range to 2,200 miles, versus about 1,100 miles for a Soviet Air Force MiG-25P.

A photo of a model in Unflown Wings shows a stretched-out MiG-25 with a larger and wider forward fuselage. “Behind the flight deck was a passenger cabin with one-abreast seating for six and an aisle, with a port-side entry door immediately aft of the flight deck,” Gordon and Komissarov write. “The cabin could be converted for cargo carriage by removing the seats.”

The concept was the brainchild of some imaginative soul at the MiG design bureau. His bosses were interested, and the Soviet air force somewhat so. MiG conducted preliminary design work on the project from 1963 until 1965.

“However, the relatively short range, limited usage of the aircraft and the large amount of design work needed all consigned against the Mikoyan biz-jet and the project was abandoned,” according to Gordon and Yefimov, who believe that this might have been the world’s first supersonic business jet.

It was not to be—and that was probably fortuitous. The Concorde proved a commercial flop due to fuel costs, as well as concerns about its noise and environmental impact.

While the Soviets had plenty of oil and couldn’t have cared less about pollution, how economical would it have been to run commercial flights with a fighter jet on steroids? Supersonic transport across the vast Soviet empire would have been nice, but a 2,000-mile range would have been somewhat limited.

The MiG-25 needed lots of maintenance, especially of its engines. Most likely a business jet would have ferried only senior officials, who would have appreciated the convenience and ignored the cost. No doubt it would also have been popular with its flight and ground crews. The Foxbat was dubbed “Flying Restaurant” by Soviet personnel who enjoyed partaking of the 132 gallons of pure alcohol needed for braking, cooling and de-icing.

Still, next time you find yourself sentenced to flying in coach, close your eyes and imagine whisking to your destination at three times the speed of sound in a converted fighter jet.

If only it could be so.

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

This article first appeared in December 2020.

Image: Wikipedia.

Adam Leong Kok Wey

U.S. Navy,

It is not surprising that today, when confronted with potential risks of a peer competitor challenging the status quo of free and open maritime passage as provided under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the United States is continuing its strategic policy to actively safeguard its interests in Southeast Asia as it did 190 years ago.

The Biden administration’s ongoing blitz of diplomatic visits—including Vice President Kamala Harris’s visits to Vietnam and Singapore at the end of August; Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s virtual meetings in early August with Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) officials; and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s trips to Vietnam, the Philippines, and Singapore (where he gave the IISS Fullerton Lecture) in July—indicates that the United States is coming back strongly in the Southeast Asia region, purportedly to balance China and to uphold the rules-based order in the South China Sea.  Nevertheless, a lesser-known event that had occurred 190 years ago provided the catalyst for the United States’ first strategic involvement in the Southeast Asia region.

In February 1831, a U.S. merchant ship, Friendship, arrived at Kuala Batu off the coast of Sumatra island to conduct its lucrative pepper trade. The Strait of Malacca runs between the eastern side of Sumatra and the western coastline of Peninsular Malaysia. While smaller boats were used to transport pepper onto Friendship moored off the coast, it was attacked by pirates which killed its crew and plundered its cargo of opium and gold. The Friendship’s captain, Charles M. Endicott, and a few of his men who were ashore when the attack took place survived and escaped. With the help of other U.S. merchantmen in the area, he managed to recover his ship and sailed back to Salem, Massachusetts, to report the incident. U.S. president Andrew Jackson was enraged and decided to send a retributive naval operation to inflict “chastisement”—to punish the pirates and deter further piracy. This was the first U.S. naval operation to keep maritime sea lanes safe in Southeast Asia.

A U.S. Navy frigate, USS Potomac, commanded by Commodore John Downes was sent to Sumatra on August 19, 1831. The mission was known as the First Sumatran Expedition. The USS Potomac was armed with a combination of thirty-two carronades and thirty-five long guns, and had close to 500 sailors and marines on board.

The frigate arrived off Kuala Batu on February 5, 1832, and found that there were five forts guarding the coastline. Commodore Downes met with a local chieftain and was informed that the pirates will not be receptive to negotiations.  Downes decided to attack the coastal forts at Kuala Batu on February 7, 1832. The USS Potomac, disguised as a Danish merchantman, managed to sail close to Kuala Batu and landed a force of 282 marines and bluejackets. The U.S. naval party promptly started burning the pirates’ boats and assaulted the forts but met fierce local resistance that led to brutal hand-to-hand fighting. The Potomac provided covering fire with its cannons causing substantial damage to four of the coastal forts. The marines and bluejackets succeeded in defeating the pirates on the ground; The rest of the locals retreated into the surrounding jungle. An estimated 150 pirates and two Americans were killed in the amphibious raid.

After crushing the pirates, the U.S. Marines and bluejackets were withdrawn. The Potomac continued to bombard Kuala Batu’s last remaining fort further inland and killed another 300 locals before the survivors sued for peace with Downes. Other local chieftains, fearing for their own fates, also asked for mercy from Downes who made them to agree not to attack any U.S. vessels in the area or else face similar punishment. The Potomac, having accomplished its mission, sailed away and completed its circumnavigation of the globe.

Thus ended the First Sumatran Expedition. Nonetheless, six years later, another U.S. merchant ship, the Eclipse, was attacked at Sumatra near Trobongan village and its crew was massacred.  The United States sent a Second Sumatran Expedition which reached Sumatra in 1839. The U.S. naval flotilla of two frigates destroyed Kuala Batu and Muckie. Afterward, there were no more major pirate attacks on U.S. merchantmen in the Strait of Malacca area for a long time.

These U.S. strategic missions in the 1830s initiated by the pirate attack on Friendship were the first military interventions to protect maritime security in Southeast Asia. 

Today, the United States is again flexing its political and military muscles to ensure international waters in the region are safe, secure, and free for all to use, subscribing to the global rules-based order. It is not surprising that today, when confronted with potential risks of a peer competitor challenging the status quo of free and open maritime passage as provided under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the United States is continuing its strategic policy to actively safeguard its interests in Southeast Asia as it did 190 years ago. Fortunately, today America is not alone. The United States now has many allies and security partners in the region that share common security interests.

Adam Leong Kok Wey is associate professor in strategic studies and the Deputy Director of Research in the Centre for Defence and International Security Studies (CDISS) at the National Defence University of Malaysia. His latest book is  Strategy and Special Operations: Eastern and Western Perspectives published by NDUM Press (2021).

Image: Flickr.

Ethen Kim Lieser

Stimulus,

Anywhere between five and ten percent of those eligible for the checks have yet to see the direct cash in their bank accounts.

Despite the lack of new updates put out by the Internal Revenue Service, know that there are Americans out there who are still waiting to get their hands on the $1,400 coronavirus stimulus checks that are an essential part of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.

The latest estimates suggest that approximately one hundred seventy million checks—representing a sizeable value of $400 billion—have already headed out to eligible Americans since the passage of the stimulus bill in the spring. Anywhere between five and ten percent of those eligible for the checks have yet to see the direct cash in their bank accounts.

Options Available

However, do take note that there are still options available to those who have been relegated to the sidelines for this third round of stimulus. Perhaps it is high time to finally talk to a live human being by dialing the IRS Economic Impact Payment phone number, which is 800-919-9835.

Yes, there’s no doubt that many callers will be left on hold for a considerable amount of time, but for some individuals, this is indeed a necessary step they have to take.

Do be aware that the IRS is juggling several other responsibilities concurrently, not to mention the thirty-five million tax returns that it is currently working through. “IRS live phone assistance is extremely limited at this time,” states the agency’s website.

File Tax Return

Keep in mind that those individuals who recently filed their tax returns were able to see the money land in their bank accounts several weeks after. For months, the IRS has pressed Americans to file an extension and complete the returns if they haven’t already.

“Although payments are automatic for most people, the IRS continues to urge people who don’t normally file a tax return and haven’t received Economic Impact Payments to file a 2020 tax return to get all the benefits they’re entitled to under the law, including tax credits such as the 2020 Recovery Rebate Credit, the Child Tax Credit, and the Earned Income Tax Credit,” the IRS says.

Filing a tax return will also help out with collecting missing stimulus checks from the first two rounds, as the ultra-handy Recovery Rebate Credit has been added to the forms.

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

Most eligible Americans should have received the confirmation letter known as Notice 1444 from the IRS stating that their stimulus check was issued. If it is still missing, these individuals should immediately request an IRS payment trace.

Know that the same action can also be initiated if the IRS “Get My Payment” tool shows that the payments have been transferred but the balance has not changed in the recipient’s bank account.

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

Jeff Groom

Bombers, Asia

The technological marvels unveiled in the First Gulf War including the precision weapons that were supposed to transform warfare into simply pushing buttons were soundly defeated by sandals, superior will, and AK-47 rifles.

In the final scene of the Vietnam classic Platoon, the Bravo Company Commander, Bravo 6, authorizes a “danger close” airstrike on his position as a last desperate measure against being overrun by a North Vietnamese Army (NVA) nighttime attack. As Marines and Air Force heavy-lift stage a rerun of escape from Saigon and help evacuate U.S. embassy staff as well as thousands of desperate Afghans, the Pentagon last week completed what appears to be a final large scale bombing campaign using primarily B-52 Stratofortress bombers.

In an ironic twist, it was the B-52, the now almost seventy-year-old airframe, that was one of the first aircraft on the scene in Afghanistan after 9/11. As told in the book Horse Soldiers, U.S. Special Forces partnered with the Northern Alliance to call in precision airstrikes on entrenched Taliban positions in the fall of 2001. What are “precision” strikes? Don’t bombers drop dozens of bombs to saturate an area like the raids on Dresden and Tokyo in World War II? Back then yes; today, not so much at all really.

Looking past the shocking headlines as Afghanistan reverts to Taliban control, it is worth analyzing just how outdated and irrelevant the entire concept of the “bomber” actually is. Like many other pieces of military hardware, technology has rendered them redundant and irrelevant, and only the fiscal inertia of the war state propels them forward at their current scale. In addition to the B-52, the pork includes the B-2 Spirit, the B-1 Lancer, and the latest “bomber” being developed by Northrup Grumman, the B-21 Raider.

Beginning with redundant, the bombing raids of World War II were conducted with what are today called “dumb bombs.” Accuracy was a function of release point above and offset to the intended target; once released only ballistics had a say in terminal accuracy. It was simply a numbers game: in order to effectively destroy a given target, a large number of bombs would have to be dropped in order to have a high enough statistical chance of hitting it. Despite their firepower, carpet bombing with dumb bombs was notoriously inaccurate. In 1944 forty-seven B-29s raided the Yawata Steel Works in Japan, but only one bomber scored a hit, with one on its bombs.

As Vietnam came to a close, industry and defense contractors pioneered laser-guided bombs. The original dumb bombs were retrofitted with a laser seeker head and guidance fins that steered the weapon based on the reflection of a high-powered laser designator being deployed either on the ground or from aircraft. Their use in the Gulf War was a resounding success. In fact, “only about 9 percent of the munitions dropped in the Gulf War -- 7,400 of 84,200 tons -- were precision-guided, largely because stockpiles were limited. But that 9 percent was responsible for 75 percent of the damage done to strategic targets.”

Following laser bombs came precision bombs, or Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) paired to a Global Positioning System (GPS). The target location, derived from either ground-based forward air controllers or plane targeting pods, is entered into the bomb’s guidance computer and, after release, it steers itself to the location. Today, there are dozens of different kinds of smart munitions, but the vast majority of those dropped in the last twenty years are one of six types of bombs. In order of 500-, 1000-, and 2000-pound bombs, the laser-guided series are the GBU-12, GBU-16, and GBU-10 and the JDAM series are GBU-38, GBU-32, and GBU-31, respectively. 

What does all this have to do with bombers and redundancy? The capability of carrying precision munitions isn’t limited to the above-mentioned bombers. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter can carry both laser and GPS weapons, as can the ubiquitous F-18 Hornet, the F-16 Fighting Falcon, the A-10 Warthog, and many other current tactical jets in service. Even the propeller-driven AT-6, a military-grade version of the T-6 trainer, can carry both types of precision weapons. Due to high collateral damage and civilian casualties, the era of carpet bombing is long over. Now bombers use their payload capacity almost exclusively for smart weapons. The B-2 Spirit can carry eighty 500-lb GBU-38 JDAMs.

Bombers using dozens of precision weapons like this B-52 strike in 2018 are impressive indeed. But it isn’t anything that a squadron worth of tactical aircraft armed with the same weapons could also do and have done countless times in the last twenty years. The point is that no matter what airframe the smart bomb falls from the same motto holds true for precision weapons: one target, one bomb.

Where current tactical aircraft lag considerably compared to bombers is range. As demonstrated in Kosovo under Operation Allied Force in 2000, six B-2 Spirits flew from their home base in Missouri to the Balkans and back to drop the opening bombs of the operation (refueling with tankers when needed). Possibly seeing the writing on the wall, all U.S. Air Force bombers were incorporated into Global Strike Command in 2009.

Having the capability to play global whack-a-mole on a moment’s notice is definitely a tool worth keeping on hand. But how many bombers are required to do this? The Air Force plans to buy around 100 B-21 Raiders at $550 million per plane to replace the B-2 Spirit and B-1 Lancer, complementing about fifty-eight current B-52s in service. Recall the B-2 was originally pared down from 132 planes to twenty-one due to cost overruns and, more sanely, the end of the Cold War. But the New Cold War with Russia and China has provided the casus belli for the current scale of the bomber force. Lieutenant General David Nahom, Air Force deputy chief of staff for Plans and Programs, called near-peer competition the “driving force” for a two-bomber fleet.

The convenience of planning for a big war then leads to the irrelevance of the bombers’ other trump card: nuclear strike. With the capability to launch nuclear weapons in intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) or from Ohio-class boomer submarines, the days of air-delivered nuclear weapons are clearly nothing more than nostalgia for Strategic Air Command, which was decommissioned in 1992. The thought of U.S. bombers in 2021 flying nuclear missions against near-peer competitors who also have similar weapons to retaliate is the final hilarious culmination of mutually assured destruction.

Finally, precision weapons have proven difficult to use precisely in low-intensity conflicts when the enemy and populace are hard to differentiate. As reported by Glenn Greenwald, during a five-month period in Afghanistan, nine out of ten persons killed by drone Hellfire missiles were not the intended targets. And smart bombs are only as smart as the coordinates they attack. Entering friendly GPS positions as target positions results in predictable fratricide. Modern “bombers” are nothing more than strategic-level precision weapon pack mules.

It is now obvious the United States will take an official loss in Afghanistan. The technological marvels unveiled in the First Gulf War including the precision weapons that were supposed to transform warfare into simply pushing buttons were soundly defeated by sandals, superior will, and AK-47 rifles. As America reassesses its missions and military following this loss, it would be prudent to significantly downsize the bomber force to a scale that matches today’s technological and strategic realities.

Jeff Groom is a former Marine officer. He is the author of American Cobra Pilot: A Marine Remembers a Dog and Pony Show.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Stephen Silver

Social Programs,

But not everyone is convinced it's a good idea. 

In addition to all of the benefit increases that have passed since the start of the pandemic, the government announced this week that it will “modernize” and increase benefits, to those in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). 

The Department of Agriculture (USDA), which supervises the program, announced a re-evaluation of the Thrifty Food Plan, a metric used by the government to calculate the SNAP benefits. As a result of this re-evaluation, the average benefit will increase beginning October 1, when the new fiscal year begins. 

The USDA started a review of the Thrifty Food Plan, as directed by the 2018 Farm Bill, and the process was expedited by an executive order by President Joe Biden shortly after he took office. It resulted in the first “cost adjustment” in the programming since 1975. 

“A modernized Thrifty Food Plan is more than a commitment to good nutrition—it’s an investment in our nation’s health, economy, and security,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said as part of the announcement. “Ensuring low-income families have access to a healthy diet helps prevent disease, supports children in the classroom, reduces health care costs, and more. And the additional money families will spend on groceries helps grow the food economy, creating thousands of new jobs along the way.”

The “data-driven” review took into account four “key factors,” according to the USDA announcement: “current food prices, what Americans typically eat, dietary guidance, and the nutrients in food items.” 

“To set SNAP families up for success, we need a Thrifty Food Plan that supports current dietary guidance on a budget,” Stacy Dean, Deputy Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services, said in the USDA release. “Too many of our fellow Americans struggle to afford healthy meals. The revised plan is one step toward getting them the support they need to feed their families.”

The change by the USDA has not exactly been met with universal praise. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, in particular, was less than complementary. 

“USDA hilariously says that Americans need to consume more calories because they are fatter. It has also adjusted its food basket to include more protein and dairy, which happen to be food products whose prices are increasing most. Milk prices were up 6.2% year-over-year in July and meat 5.9%,” the newspaper said. 

“Like other Great Society programs, food stamps have done nothing to reduce poverty and little to improve public health. They have encouraged government dependency, which is the Democrats’ political goal. Recall how Democrats fought attempts by the Trump Administration and GOP states to modestly tighten work requirements and eligibility rules. Between 2016 and 2019, the food-stamp rolls shrank by nineteen percent and benefit spending fell sixteen percent.” 

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

Image: Reuters

Ethen Kim Lieser

economy, Americas

Be aware that a person cannot report a death online.  

When older Americans get set to retire, know that there is invariably that one pressing question that all must answer: when should a person start claiming Social Security benefits?  

For many experts, the most prudent financial decision would be to hold off on filing for the benefits as long as possible—preferably till age seventy.  

According to the Social Security Administration (SSA), “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. A worker can choose to retire as early as age sixty-two, but doing so may result in a reduction of as much as 30 percent.”  

The agency concluded that “starting to receive benefits after normal retirement age may result in larger benefits. With delayed retirement credits, a person can receive his or her largest benefit by retiring at age seventy.” 

However, what a person cannot ever control is when one dies, which will naturally have a huge effect on how much Social Security money an individual will collect over his or her lifetime. If this occurs, then it’s the closest survivors who will have some decisions to make.  

Who Reports Death? 

First, know that is important for the SSA to be alerted as soon as possible after a beneficiary dies. But be aware that a person cannot report a death online.  

“In most cases, the funeral home will report the person’s death to us. You should give the funeral home the deceased person’s Social Security number if you want them to make the report,” according to the SSA website, adding that one can call 1-800-772-1213 to report a death.

The agency also noted that the deceased is not due any Social Security benefits for the month that the death occurred. If payment was made, then that money would need to be returned.

However, there is 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 website states.

“If there is no surviving spouse, the payment is made to a child who is eligible for benefits on the deceased’s record in the month of death,” according to the website.

Survivor Benefits 

As for a spouse or qualifying dependent who already was receiving money based on the deceased’s record, the benefit will automatically convert to survivor benefits. Once the widow or widower reaches full retirement age, they are legally entitled to the deceased spouse’s full benefit.

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.

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