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The Incredible F-35 Stealth Fighter: This Warplane Keeps Making History

The National Interest - Thu, 11/01/2024 - 22:04

The F-35 Lighting II stealth fighter jet is the most advanced combat aircraft in operation right now. 

But to get there hasn’t been easy or cheap. With a projected cost over its lifetime of approximately $1.7 trillion and years in the making, the F-35 Lighting II is a big investment for the United States military and its counterparts. 

So, how is the program progressing? What milestones has it achieved recently?

Milestones in the F-35 Program 

As of January, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program has achieved quite a lot. 

More than 990 aircraft of all three versions have been delivered to air forces around the world. The operational fleet has logged over 773,000 hours of flight in about 469,000 training and operational sorties. In terms of training, almost 2,300 pilots have qualified to fly the stealth fighter jet, and close to 15,500 maintainers have qualified to service and support the aircraft. 

Right now, the program is comprised of 17 participants (Italy, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Norway, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Belgium, Poland, Singapore, Finland, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States), though several others (for example, the Czech Republic and Greece) are waiting for the green light to join in. Out of the current participants, 14 services are flying the aircraft, 12 have declared initial operating capability, and there are eight operational missions by service.

Overall, the 17 participants have ordered close to 3,500 aircraft of all three types. The F-35A is by far the most popular, with 2,558 orders, followed by the F-35B with 575 orders, and by the F-35C with 340 orders. As far as the largest individual customer, the U.S. military alone has ordered almost 2,500 F-35s for the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. 

As for the F-35B and F-35C versions of the stealth fighter jet that can operate from aircraft carriers and amphibious ships, 12 warships in the U.S. Navy, Royal Navy, and Italian Navy have been activated to support the advanced aircraft; nine additional warships are slotted to qualify for F-35 operations by 2028.

The F-35 Lighting II 

The F-35 Lighting II is a fifth-generation, multi-role fighter jet that can conduct several different mission sets. 

There are three versions of the aircraft: The F-35A is the conventional iteration; the F-35B is the short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) type that can take off and land like a helicopter; and the F-35C is the aircraft carrier version of the stealth fighter jet. 

In terms of mission sets, the F-35 Lighting II can conduct competently Air Superiority, Close Air Support, Strategic Attack, Electronic Warfare, Intelligence Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, and Suppression Enemy Air Defense (SEAD)/Destruction Enemy Air Defenses (DEAD). 

Besides its stealth capabilities, performance, and advanced weaponry, it is the F-35’s sensors that make the fighter jet so valuable to the joint force. Its AN/APG-81 Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar and other sensors allow the F-35 Lighting II to act as a quarterback, guiding friendly aircraft, warships, smart munitions, and ground troops to a threat with precision. 

About the Author 

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operations and a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ). He holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP. Email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

All images are from Shutterstock. 

Forget the F-16: Why Doesn't America Send A-10 Warthogs to Ukraine?

The National Interest - Thu, 11/01/2024 - 21:40

If you’ve been to the Boise Airport, you’ve probably noticed the distinctive aircraft lining the southern edge of the field. Brownish grey, with straight wings and engines located above the rear fuselage – the A-10 Warthog is hard to miss, especially if you happen to notice the Gatling gun protruding from the nose of the airframe.

The Boise A-10s, assigned to the Idaho Air National Guard, are some of the last 281 A-10s in service – which is why you probably won’t be seeing the A-10 donated to Ukraine anytime soon, even though the A-10 was explicitly designed to kill Russian tanks advancing across the planes of eastern Europe.

A-10 Warthog: Built to kill Russian tanks

Russia has spent the first two years of the Russo-Ukraine War advancing tank columns across the planes of eastern Ukraine – much as war planners envisioned when they commissioned the design and production of the A-10 Warthog in the 1970s.

At the height of the Cold War, common wisdom held that should the conflict turn hot, the Russians would deploy their stockpiles of tanks to execute a land grab in Eastern Europe.

The projections have proven accurate, as Russia has leaned heavily on its tank technology.

Although, Russia’s tank-dependent efforts have not gone well; the Ukrainians have destroyed over 2,600 Russian tanks, often with relatively low-tech defense systems like the FGM-148 Javelin.  

If the handheld FGM-148 could wreak such havoc upon Russian tank forces, one might imagine that the A-10’s impact could have been biblical.

The design of the A-10

The modern A-10 is a cantilever low-wing monoplane with a wide chord. The A-10 maneuvers fantastically at low speeds – essential for battle space loitering and close air support – thanks to a large wing area, high wing aspect ratio, and large ailerons.

Able to loiter and operate under 1,000-foot ceilings, the A-10 has proven to be, perhaps, the world’s best close-air support jet.

Another benefit of the A-10’s wing dimensions is the ability to takeoff and land from short-distance airfields, which enables operation from obscure and austere airfields (as are often found near ongoing conflicts). Further, the A-10 was designed to be refueled, rearmed, and serviced with minimal equipment.  

The A-10 wasn’t just built to operate from austere environments, but also to survive in hostile environments. Remarkably, the A-10 can survive direct hits from armor-piercing and high-explosive projectiles (up to 23mm).

The A-10 features double-redundant hydraulic flight systems – and should the hydraulic system fail, the A-10 has a backup mechanical system. Also, the A-10 can remain airborne with extensive structural damage; A-10s have remained airborne with just one engine, half of the tail, one elevator, and half of a wing missing.

The pilot is protected, too; the A-10’s cockpit is encased within a 1,200-pound titanium armor shell, known as a “bathtub.”

The titanium plates thickness ranges from 0.5 to 1.5 inches deep and makes up almost six percent of the A-10s empty weight.   

Between the ability to loiter and provide close air support, the ability to operate from austere airfields, the minimalist maintenance requirements, and the remarkable survivability, the A-10 seems well suited for engaging frontline Russian targets.

Yet, the A-10 has a drawback – a fatal drawback – which would render the jet useless in the skies above Ukraine.

Don’t expect to see any A-10s above Ukraine

Despite the A-10s strengths – the A-10 is poorly equipped to help the Ukrainians against the Russians.

Why? Ukraine does not have control of the airspace above the conflict – meaning the A-10 would be a sitting duck in contested airspace, vulnerable to air-to-air Russian fighters like the Su-35 and MiG-31.

The A-10 has been successful in past conflicts, like Desert Storm 1.0, Desert Storm 2.0, and Afghanistan – but only after the US had secured the airspace above the conflict zone. The A-10 is a second-phase sort of weapon to be used once air superiority is established.

What the Ukrainians need right now are the tools to establish air superiority – which is where the forthcoming F-16 donations would come into play. But the likelihood of the Ukrainians ever fully establishing air superiority over the conflict is low, meaning the A-10 likely won’t have much value during the conflict.

Yet, even if the Ukrainians were able to secure air superiority, the US is unlikely to donate the A-10. The A-10 is slated for retirement and is no longer being produced. The A-10 is a political football (inspiring heated advocacy both for and against the jet’s retirement).

The Americans are unlikely to maintain A-10 related infrastructure for the purpose of training and enabling Ukrainian pilots to fly the jet.  

About the Author: Harrison Kass 

Harrison Kass is a defense and national security writer with over 1,000 total pieces on issues involving global affairs. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken. Email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org

Main image from Shutterstock. All other images are from Creative Commons. 

HMS Prince of Wales: The Royal Navy's Powerhouse Aircraft Carrier is Back in Service

The National Interest - Thu, 11/01/2024 - 21:28

In December 2023, the Royal Navy's largest warship returned to Portsmouth and received what could only be described as a hero's welcome, as more than 2,000 friends and family gathered to greet HMS Prince of Wales. The vessel departed from the UK at the beginning of September for an autumn dedicated to expanding the boundaries of naval aviation with the Royal Navy's two Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers.

The return was bittersweet, however, as the ship's crew also bid farewell to Commanding Officer Captain Hewitt OBE RN, who has overseen a successful 2023. Captain Will Blackett has since assumed command of HMS Prince of Wales.

She is the eighth vessel to be named for the title of the UK's heir apparent, and the first since the King George V-class battleship that was launched in 1939 and sunk less than two years later during the Second World War.

Her commission date marked the 78th anniversary of the sinking of her predecessor.

HMS Prince of Wales is one of the most powerful surface warships ever constructed in the UK, and in addition to serving as a deterrent, the aircraft carrier will be used for humanitarian relief, high-intensity warfighting, and combating terrorism.

Two years ago, in January 2022, HMS Prince of Wales took over the role of command ship for NATO's maritime high readiness force from the French Navy.

HMS Prince of Wales: Fighting Aircraft Carrier for the Royal Navy

The vessel is one of the most powerful surface warships ever constructed in the UK, with a flight deck that is 70 meters wide (230 feet), and 280 meters (918 feet) long. The warship isn't equipped with catapults and arrestor wires and instead was designed to operate with Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) jets from a ski-jump ramp.

The flattop can embark up to thirty-six Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II fifth-generation stealth fighters and four Merlin helicopters. 

In surge conditions, the carrier is capable of supporting up to seventy F-35Bs, while she has accommodation for 250 Royal Marines and the ability to support them with attack and transport helicopters.

The carrier operates with a crew of 679 but can accommodate up to 1,600 personnel – including full airwing, Royal Marines, and even refugees if required.

In addition to its aircraft, which serve as its primary offensive and defensive systems, HMS Prince of Wales is armed with three Phalanx CIWS (close-in weapon system) turrets to deal with incoming threats from the sea and air. Comprising a radar-guided 20mm Vulcan cannon mounted on a swiveling base, the Phalanx has a dual fire rate of 3,000 or 4,500 shots per minute and is capable of hitting targets up to a mile away.

The carrier has a top speed of 25 knots and a range of 10,000 nautical miles.

Not All Smooth Waters

The 65,000-tonne carrier has also had its share of problems since even before officially entering service.

The warship required a lengthy maintenance period in 2020 to address a leak that was reported to cause serious flooding to some lower compartments, which resulted in damage to several systems that cost £3.3million to repair while an additional £2.2million was spent fixing the pipes on both of the Royal Navy's two brand new carriers.

The carrier was also sidelined for several months after she broke down off the Isle of Wight just one day after departing from Portsmouth in September 2022 to begin a planned four-month deployment to the United States. Divers were even called in to inspect the hull of the 930-foot-long flattop after damage was reported to the starboard propeller shaft.

The disabled flattop had to be towed to Rosyth, Scotland, for repairs, which reportedly cost the UK taxpayers upwards of £25 million ($30.5 million USD). One reason for the sky-high repair bill was that an inspection identified a problem with the Prince of Wales' port shaft, and Royal Navy officials have decided to overhaul that one as well. The carrier's return to service was further delayed due to the availability of parts – which highlighted troubles the Royal Navy could face in a major crisis.

It was a major embarrassment for the UK's senior service, as the breakdown came just months after HMS Prince of Wales took on the duties of NATO flagship. That was also a headache for the UK's ruling Conservative government as it gave ammunition to Labour's shadow cabinet – which took aim at the slow pace of the progress.

"At a time when threats are rising, we need our Navy's ships at sea keeping us safe, not stuck in dock for repeated repairs," John Healey, Labour's shadow defence secretary, said earlier this year.

However, HMS Prince of Wales is back in service and recently completed F-35 training operations with the United States Navy, and ready to prove that she is the finest the Royal Navy has to offer. That shouldn't be too tall of an order.

Author Experience and Expertise: Peter Suciu 

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org

Is Diplomacy Between the U.S. and North Korea Possible in 2024?

The National Interest - Thu, 11/01/2024 - 21:15

North Korea has been on a different course in recent years than the path it seemed to follow in earlier decades. The transition from the Clinton-Bush administrations’ slow, drawn-out negotiations, interrupted by the North with bursts of provocation—sinking ships, shelling islands, shooting down helicopters, testing nuclear weapons—eventually evolved into something entirely different. Over the last three years, the North has shown no interest in protracted negotiations with the United States. Instead of provocations designed to draw attention and create bargaining chips, it has settled on steady, determined testing of long-range ballistic missiles to deter any attempt at regime change and acquiring fissile material for an expanded nuclear weapons arsenal to threaten “first use” of nuclear weapons in the event of a conflict.

The transition came after nearly a decade of a U.S. policy of “benign neglect” at the end of the Bush administration and over the Obama years. This was termed, at one point, “strategic patience,” but considered by many observers as just another version of containment: no negotiations, continued sanctions, and cultivation of our essential alliance relations. Then came the Trump administration, which started with a sharp rise in tensions, exchanges of threats and insults but rapidly evolved into summitry, marked by expressions of warm feelings that made it seem as though the two leaders could, indeed, “meet for lunch” and settle all that troubled relations between their two countries. That did not work out: the Trump administration was not up for “patient engagement,” and the North would eventually see that it was not. 

So, the Biden team faced a wary North Korean leadership and a rapidly changing international scene. Asia was widely perceived as marked by a rising China and a fading America. Europe was the scene of a resurgent Russia, with only Ukraine to hold it back—the rest of Europe and the United States apparently prepared to accept Russian aggression if military assistance was not enough to prevent it. In this new world, the third generation of Kim leadership in North Korea has chosen to maintain relations with Beijing, embracing its essential role as a Chinese buffer state while aggressively improving its relations with Moscow, becoming a sort of arsenal of dictatorship.

Before reaching the unhappy conclusion that, since the prerequisites for diplomacy seem absent, we should expect “more of the same” in the coming year, it might be prudent to consider the possibility that we may not be so lucky. We should at least entertain the thought that nuclear war could break out in Northeast Asia in 2024.

How could that happen? Let’s count the ways. First, there’s everybody’s favorite crisis, the Taiwan contingency. Imagine a Beijing-perceived Taiwanese provocation leading to Chinese moves and prompting U.S. countermoves, with neither side certain how far the other is prepared to go. Yet, both sides intend to signal their determination not to back down. This is, roughly, U.S. policy. In this scenario, North Korea, with or without encouragement from China, acts to support China by issuing nuclear threats against U.S. assets and allies in Northeast Asia, posing for the United States the prospect of facing two nuclear weapons states in one theater—unless Russia chooses to make it three. Japan and South Korea have no nuclear weapons. They would depend on U.S. extended deterrence in this scenario, even though Seoul, at least, has no interest in becoming involved in a Taiwan contingency. This scenario requires serious thought because nation-states can be as opportunistic as their leaders.

In a less complicated scenario, imagine the North Korean leadership decides to use its nuclear weapons arsenal and delivery vehicles to compel South Korean compliance with the North’s political and territorial directives and to assure deterrence of U.S. intervention to honor its alliance with Seoul. It is essential in this scenario—and any others one might think of—that we understand what the United States would actually do is not the critical calculation. It is rather what the North Korean leadership believes it would do. The North may think that its developing ICBM capability will serve to not only deter a U.S. attempt at regime change but also undercut the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence to its allies in Asia. That calculation might well determine whether or not nuclear war breaks out.

If we are truly concerned about the possibility of nuclear war, it is not enough to think through how deterrence might fail as North Korean and Chinese nuclear arsenals grow. One should consider the other ways a nuclear war might start, which have nothing to do with the failure of deterrence. Consider the possibility of an accidental or even an unauthorized launch of nuclear weapons by the North Korean military. They are, after all, relatively new to this “game” as compared to the other states with nuclear weapons. And North Korean rhetoric on its willingness to use its nuclear weapons should not give us confidence that this would be such a low-probability event.

Suffice it to say that the growing nuclear weapons arsenals in Northeast Asia, in the context of a competitive and even hostile political environment, should give us pause. At least, we should consider the risks we run when we make diplomacy a policy of last resort.

But suppose the United States wished to have another run at diplomacy with North Korea. Is there a way forward? Arguably, yes. However, in the last year of the Biden administration, with a seriously contested election in the offing, it is hard to argue that the timing is just right. 

That said, it is not wrong to consider what it would take to attract Pyongyang to discussions with Washington. The answer is simple but not easy. The United States must genuinely seek normalization of relations and keep denuclearization as a longer-term goal rather than a first step in the process. On the table for initial discussion would be sanctions relief, the character of military exercises with the ROK, and improvements in the North’s human rights policies— something in which Pyongyang has shown interest in the past and is essential to normalization. Simple, perhaps, but not easy.

About the Author: Ambassador Robert Gallucci 

Ambassador Robert Gallucci is currently a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. He previously served as U.S. Ambassador-at-Large and Special Envoy for the U.S. Department of State, focused on the non-proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction. He served as the chief U.S. negotiator during the North Korean nuclear crisis of 1994, as Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, and as Deputy Executive Chairman of the UN Special Commission following the first Gulf War. Upon leaving public service, Ambassador Gallucci served as Dean of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University for thirteen years before he became president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

The main image and intext images are from Shutterstock. 

Why India Rents Nuclear Submarines from Russia

The National Interest - Thu, 11/01/2024 - 19:43

India rents nuclear submarines from Russia - At the end of 2023, Russia and India took steps to expand their military cooperation. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in Moscow a few days after Christmas, asserting that such a partnership would benefit both countries in addition to helping preserve security on the Eurasian continent. When the U.S. and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies imposed heavy sanctions on Moscow following its Ukraine invasion, Russia had few allies to turn to for aid.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has notably the Kremlin via swaths of weapons transfers including lethal unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). India has also evolved to become one of Moscow’s primary economic partners since February 2022. In fact, according to Jaishankar, Indian-Russian trade is expected to top $50 billion this year.

Yes, India 'Rents' Nuclear Submarines from Russia: A History 

New Delhi and Moscow’s military cooperation is not new. In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union lent a nuclear-powered submarine when it granted India the Charlie-class nuclear cruise missile submarine.

New Delhi said the vessel was delivered to an Indian envoy in Vladivostok in 1988 for training purposes.

At the time, India possessed 10 diesel-powered submarines and two aircraft carriers. While the Soviet submarine was highly desired, its lease came with strict restrictions.

When the K-43 submarine entered service with the Indian Navy as the INS Chakra, it became subject to incessant Soviet inspections and maintenance sessions, was largely prevented from operating in offensive wartime missions, and could not be loaded with certain weapons.

Additionally, Indian crews were now even permitted to man certain areas of the INS Chakra, including the submarine’s reactor.

While New Delhi planned to lease the submarine for ten years, the INS Chakra was returned to the Soviet Union in 1990. Analysts assert that the Soviet’s strict restrictions associated with the lease were in part to blame for the shortened agreement.

According to former Russian Naval officer Alexander Ivanovich Terenov, other issues surrounding the K-43 surfaced. In his book ‘Under three flags- The saga of the submarine cruiser K-43/Chakra,’ Terenov explained that there were

"[M]any incidents of submarine malfunction. The outboard pipes and equipment corroded fast due to the high air temperature, humidity and salinity. The main suction line was not renewed during the last refit in the Soviet Union which caused flooding and fire. A major emergency at sea was experienced and it took 3 months to repair the submarine. Other issues included poor documentation, false data and poor discipline in the supply of spares from the Soviet Union. In one instance, the Indian navy refused to take supplies of the batteries due to their poor condition. The batteries had to be set right in India itself."

The INS Chakra - Specs & Capabilities

Initially designated as K-43 by the Soviet Union, the Charlie-class nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine entered service in the mid-1960s.

The vessel measured just over 300 feet with a beam of 10 feet and a draft of 26 feet long. Powered by a VM-5 pressurized water reactor and one five-blade propeller, the K-43 could reach up to 15 knots when surfaced and 23 knots when submerged.

Regarding armaments, the vessel was equipped with 8 SS-N-7 Starbright nuclear capable anti-ship missiles, in addition to six torpedo tubes that could carry 12 Starfish anti-submarine missiles or 12 torpedoes.

Introducing the Nerpa

Although the K-43 submarine lease did not work out as intended, it would not mark the end of the Indian-Russia military partnership.

In 2010, Moscow leased one of its newest nuclear-powered submarines to New Delhi. In this new ten-year-long lease, the NATO-designated Akula-class submarine would elevate India’s underwater capabilities. The Nerpa (later renamed the INS Chakra) was constructed back in 1993, but was put on hold due to lack of funding. India then sponsored the completion of the submarine, which would later enter service with the Russian Navy as the N-152 Nerpa in 2009.

Notably, while the submarine was carrying out sea trials in the Sea of Japan, 20 civilian specialists were killed onboard when a fire suppression system was accidentally activated.

As part of the arrangement, India would pay roughly $670 million to sail the submarine over a 10-year-long period. By 2012, the ship was commissioned at Bolshoy Kamen where she commenced her home voyage under Indian control to its base at Visakhapatnam.

Like the K-43’s experience, the INS Chakra’s journey with the Indian Navy was cut short. The submarine was returned to Moscow in 2021 due to “increasingly unreliable power plant and maintenance issues.” 

About the Author: Maya Carlin 

Maya Carlin, National Security Writer with The National Interest, is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org

To Win a War with China, the Military Should Embrace Digital Wargaming

The National Interest - Thu, 11/01/2024 - 19:31

Educational wargaming is underutilized and possesses the potential to teach warfighters intricate modern doctrine and force capabilities. Historically, analytical wargaming has functioned as a critical tool for military leadership, offering insights into force capabilities and aiding decision-making through experiential learning. Yet, within the US Navy and Marine Corps, the potential of digital or electronic wargaming as an educational platform for junior officers and Midshipmen remains largely untapped. Traditional tabletop wargames, once favored by older generations, fail to engage the younger, digitally-raised cohort and instead cater to a niche community. Statistics speak volumes— about 80 percent of Generation Z and Millennials play video games and average around seven hours of weekly gametime—highlighting the opportunity for a new generation of wargames. This data underscores a missed opportunity in leveraging simulator-based educational wargaming for the 21st-century Navy and USMC. The capacity to craft a sophisticated, educational, and enjoyable physics-based simulator exists, and it is incumbent upon the Navy and USMC to embrace this modern technology for Professional Military Education (PME) and junior officer training.

In the Fall of 2023, the University of Southern California’s Naval ROTC program embarked on a year-long initiative to introduce Midshipmen to the complexities of the Taiwan problem set. This scenario-focused education requires a significant understanding of naval and amphibious operations and is ideal for incorporating wargames. USC’s educational program blends discussions, lectures, and essential reading materials, such as James R. Holmes’ Red Star Over the Pacific: China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy (2018), which enabled the students to have an in-depth discussion with Dr. Holmes via Zoom regarding Taiwan. However, it is worth noting that this initiative provides only an introductory-level education for Midshipmen and would benefit immensely from the addition of fleet-integrated educational wargaming.

Historical instances, such as the development of War Plan Orange prior to the Second World War, demonstrate how effective analytical wargaming can be when mixed into scenario decision-making. Yet, no standardized efforts were made to prepare junior officers similarly. The Naval War College and officer training pipelines did not see the value in educating junior officers like senior officers. However, even though junior officers do not require the same analytical gaming experience as fleet commanders, they can benefit enormously from exposure to educational wargaming to introduce them to various topics. As a learning tool, wargames can train the participants in force capability and doctrine, provide terrain familiarization, and offer opportunities for decision-making development. Additionally, they challenge the participants mentally, stimulating and driving sophisticated problem-solving and decision-making. As a tool, variables can be added or subtracted to increase/decrease game complexity, allowing for infinite theoretical scenarios.

Updating the naval officer training curriculum should not be difficult. The United States Naval Academy (USNA) and Naval Service Training Command (NSTC) promulgate curriculum guiding Professional Core Competencies (PCCs) roughly every three years that govern “the foundational standards of ‘officership’ by delineating core competencies required of all officer accession programs.” Whispers of a new competency for basic instructional wargaming exist, but even if included in the 2024 PCCs, this will require significant time and resources to train unit Officer Instructors to run educational games proficiently. Additionally, few ROTC courses have extra time, and an already burdened weekly schedule leaves little for adding extra training on top of current requirements for Midshipmen. To the collective groan of students and instructors alike, adding wargaming to officer training will necessitate a standalone time slot in weekly schedules, rather than shoehorning wargaming into existing time. Furthermore, Officer Instructors will need professional training to standardize implementation and enable cross-unit competition.

The Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfighting at Marine Corps University (MCU), who are pioneering educational gaming for MCU students, example one potential source of training for Officer Instructors. MCU could integrate with the biannual three-week Teaching in Higher Education (TiHE) course for incoming NROTC instructors, and allow them to reach the hundreds of Sailors and Marines who commission through NROTC each year. Moreover, standardization of training and the games played across ROTC programs is paramount to enable cross-unit integration and competition. Competition in wargaming events would incentivize performance and further stimulate Midshipmen education. The Government Accountability Office recently recommended that the Navy and Marine Corps “evaluate the costs and benefits of developing standard wargaming education and qualifications for wargaming personnel.” Consequently, the services must establish wargaming as an Officer Instructor (OI) qualification to standardize and enhance training pipelines through educational gaming. This qualification could mimic the newly introduced Warrior Toughness program, which has gradually become part of the Fleet through accession pipelines. After rotating through ROTC the cadre returning to the Fleet could broaden wargaming initiatives at the unit level, gradually fostering a culture shift towards embracing wargaming more extensively across the services.

However, if the Navy and Marines want to capture the attention of a new generation, they must develop an educational but entertaining multi-dimensional physics-based simulator to maximize the application of 21st-century technology. Tabletop wargaming, while valuable, is not sufficient. Tabletop gaming offers an immediate but temporary avenue for educational learning at a remarkably affordable investment. Straightforward tabletop problem-solving games can be completed within a brief timeframe, ranging from twenty to thirty minutes. An illustrative example is the microgame “Call Sign,” which concentrates on carrier combat and introduces singular variables, showcasing how these games can efficiently impart knowledge and skills, but these games are insufficient to meet the needs of the ROTC curriculum and lack the potential of digital games.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) sponsored a study on the value of video games, which concluded that “people who play video games are quicker at processing information” and that only “ten hours of video games can change the structure and organization of a person’s brain,” therefore tying informational learning to entertainment has a remarkable potential to increase retention. Most importantly, education must be balanced with entertainment, meaning accurate force capabilities and doctrine must coincide with quality graphical rendering of the action and include regular updates. Simulating forced decision-making with minimal time and minimal information provides invaluable experience for future military decision-makers. Furthermore, an in-depth military simulator would require knowledge of blue force design and doctrine, cultivate warrior skillsets, and increase tactical acumen. A competitive gaming culture amongst recruits and service members will ensure the longevity of such a program.

Effective strategy games blend a minimal initial learning curve but increase in depth and complexity while remaining re-playable due to variety. Like traditional board wargames, turn-based games necessitate a fundamental understanding of force design and doctrine. Conversely, real-time strategy (RTS) games demand swift decision-making, compelling players to act within a restricted timeframe. Modern games often integrate these two approaches, allowing players to oversee larger forces strategically in a turn-based mode while enabling detailed control over individual units during confrontations. This amalgamation of turn-based and RTS elements harnesses the educational advantages of understanding force dynamics while providing experiential learning through decision-making, offering a holistic approach to strategic gaming.

One potential commercially available wargame is Command: Modern OperationsHowever, this game suffers from being overly complex, detracting from the entertainment value of the equation as it requires many hours of instruction to play. Unfortunately, no commercially available modern strategic video game fits this balanced role, and most avoid contemporary conflict scenarios and instead focus on fictional Cold War scenarios. For example, naval-centric Cold Waters (2017) and land-centric WARNO (2022) display well-researched military simulators exhibiting the capabilities of Cold War-era forces. The success of Cold War-era simulators remains undeniable, as the developers of Cold Waters have showcased an upcoming impressively modeled new game, Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile AgeThe cost of developing a modern video game ranges from $10,000 to millions. However, the DoD could drastically cut this cost by leveraging an already created modern simulator, such as WARNO, funding this successful team and providing experts to modify a pre-created simulator to reflect modern force capabilities.

Furthermore, the official Navy/USMC stamp on a military simulator would draw outsized attention from the private market, serve as a potent recruitment tool, and create a competitive outlet for Midshipmen and officers. The Navy has already worked to capitalize on the popularity of video games by creating an E-Sports team, which is run by the Navy Recruiting Command. Yet, an official strategy simulator would draw further interest through military recognition by connecting to modern youth in the popular video game dimension. In the US alone, the strategy game market revenue reached $14.88 billion in 2022, exhibiting a significant market share of overall games. Ultimately, the success of a military simulator hinges on player enjoyment and support; popular strategy games such as Starcraft II maintain over a five million monthly player count despite being a decade old. In comparison, WARNO only sold 213,000 copies so far, as it lacks competitive depth.

Unfortunately, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has outpaced the US in competitive digital wargaming, recognizing its potential for education since the early 2000s. Notably, since 2017, the PLA has organized national wargaming competitions, boasting more than 20,000 participants in 2019 alone. Emphasizing the educational aspect, the PLA actively encourages military simulator usage to instruct on force design changes and to promote military affairs to the civilian population. Initially, the PLA benefitted enormously from mimicking US civilian market military simulators, but has since shifted to domestic-made strategy games, such as Mozi Joint Operations Deduction System, which enables military members to fight simulated battles with Chinese equipment. Additionally, the PLA copied popular US titles, such as Call of Duty, to create their own first-person shooter, Glorious Mission, to “improve combat skills and technological understanding” in military members. Wargaming has evolved into an integral part of PME for the PLA, gaining widespread popularity even amongst the civilian population. This exemplifies a dimension where the PLA initially imitated the US military, strategically leveraged the US private sector, and ultimately leapfrogged US capabilities to outperform the US military in PME.

Damien O’Connell, the founder of the Warfighting Society, recently penned an article, “Progress and Perils: Educational Wargaming in the US Marine Corps,” on The Maneuverist blog, which delineated implementation issues for fleet-wide educational gaming. He outlines five obstacles to greater implementation of wargaming in the operating forces: “(1) confusion about what educational wargaming is and is not, (2) skepticism of its value, (3) ignorance of its successful use, (4) limited time, (5) aversion to nerd culture, and (6) ignorance of how to integrate wargames into training and education plans.” The Navy and USMC must not conflate educational gaming with analytical wargaming. Decision-making opportunities and force design instruction found in basic wargames will answer any confusion surrounding wargaming and its value and demonstrate its successful use to any observing critics. However, overcoming issues related to time and integration will demand a substantial initial investment and revised time requirements through curriculum standardization. Aversion to “nerd culture” stems from a historical stigma against board gaming, shared even by video gamers; this dislike can be easily solved by tapping into the voracious appetite for video games.

A secondary benefit of creating wargame literate junior officers would positively boost the ability of time-proven analytical gaming and thus improve force design and doctrine. The early introduction of wargames will create “a bigger pool of individuals who are exposed to the principles of wargaming, allowing the DOD to cast a wider net when looking for qualified individuals to build, run, and analyze games,” and in turn, increase the performance of future professional analytical wargaming. Furthermore, the over-reliance on civilian-run wargames has created a capability deficit among military personnel, because fewer are trained in how to run and manage wargames. This culture change could imitate the drastic success of the Prussian officer corps, which spawned avid wargamers such as General von Moltke—the Prussian army chief of staff—who expanded the use of wargaming under his leadership. As a result, the Prussian military dominated the European continent in the 19th century and forged a dominant military doctrine that lasted a century. Unsurprisingly, “many countries attributed the battlefield success of Moltke and the Prussians to the integration of wargaming in their army.”

Junior officer education needn’t be limited to monotonous PowerPoint displays or exclusive to PME. Wargaming presents a straightforward remedy for a complex educational challenge and should not be dismissed as an after-school activity. If the US military aims to regain the edge against the PLA in critical thinking and education, it must create a finely tuned educational military simulation video game. Furthermore, the potential for training will exponentially grow as technology such as virtual reality becomes more readily available. The Navy and USMC must stay ahead of the educational curve, set the foundation for a future sophisticated Ender’s Game-like military simulation or Star Trek’s morality-testing unwinnable game, the Kobayashi Maru, and turn science fiction into reality. Existing tabletop games may temporarily suffice but must be formally integrated into the curriculum and eventually replaced by digital simulations. The value of multi-domain educational learning from wargaming cannot be overstated. Moreover, increased interaction with younger generations through a popular Navy-endorsed video game could help draw in technology-oriented recruits. The Navy and USMC must embrace 21st-century technology and adapt it to benefit instruction for foreseeable near-peer threats. No military aviator argues against the extensive use of flight simulators in modern instruction; this attitude must be broadened to the entire Fleet.

LT Jack Tribolet flew the MH-60S Knighthawk with HSC-26 out of Norfolk. He currently serves as an Officer Instructor teaching at the University of Southern California and is the nationwide NROTC Course Coordinator for the class Seapower & Maritime Affairs.

This article was first published by CIMSEC.

Time to Send F-35 Fighters to Ukraine?

The National Interest - Thu, 11/01/2024 - 18:50

Why Don't Wend Send the F-35 Stealth Fighter to Ukraine? Ukraine has defied expectations, staunchly holding off the Russian invaders for two years. And while the Ukrainians have fought doggedly, their resistance is dependent, in large part, upon the donation of Western cash, intelligence, and military equipment.

Frankly, the Ukrainians are unlikely to have been able to resist the Russian advances without the steady influx of military assistance from the NATO powers, most especially the United States.

To date, the West has provided Ukraine with vital equipment, including surface-to-air missile systems like the PATRIOT and anti-tank equipment like the FGM-148.

Ukraine is eagerly awaiting the donation of fourth-generation F-16 fighters, which would help mitigate the Russian advantage in the skies above Ukraine. But the donation of F-16s raises questions: why donate F-16s when superior, fifth-generation fighter technology, i.e., the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, is available?

Answers may range from the practical to the abstract, but the simple fact is that the US is unlikely to donate F-35 to Ukraine.

Ukraine would benefit from the F-35 Stealth Fighter

Ukraine surprised the world in denying their airspace to the Russians. Yet, the Russians hold a distinct advantage in the skies, running their Su-35s and MiG-31s up against the Ukrainian’s Su-27s and MiG-29s.

The Russian aircraft is newer, with higher-powered radar and more sophisticated missiles. The advantage here is that the Russian aircraft can locate and engage with Ukrainian aircraft further away than the Ukrainian aircraft.

So, in effect, the Russians can engage the Ukrainians from beyond the range of the Ukrainian fighters. In contrast, the Ukrainians must sneak within the range of the Russians to engage – a dangerous place to be.

Ukraine has compensated their weaker aircraft with donated surface-to-air systems, like the IRIS-T, NASAMS, and PATRIOT – but the SAMs are just a stopgap until Ukraine can receive more capable fighters.

The inbound F-16s, with advanced radar and modern missiles like the AIM-120, would offer Ukraine a significant upgrade over their Su-27s and MiG-29s, allowing the Ukrainians to engage Russian aircraft from greater distances.

But the F-16 is a fourth-generation fighter, first built in the 1970s and no longer on par with today’s cutting-edge aircraft. So, why not give the Ukrainians today’s cutting-edge aircraft?

Fifth-generation technology to the Ukrainians?

Amongst the NATO powers, only America has developed fifth-generation technology – the F-22 and the F-35.

The F-22 Raptor remains the world’s preeminent air superiority fighter – but America has never exported the F-22 and never will. Production has already ceased on the F-22 and the US will hold onto each of their remaining F-22s.

The F-35 Lightning II, on the other hand, has been exported to US allies around the world, including NATO nations. One might expect a US-backed Ukraine to receive a jet that the US has already exported to places like Singapore and Norway – especially given how helpful the F-35 would be to the Ukrainian’s cause.

Consider the effectiveness of the F-16: “Kyiv’s allies hope the [F-16] can push Russian aircraft farther from the frontlines, target radar transmitters more effectively and hunt down more cruise missiles,” Reuters reported. “But [the F-16s] will address a problem that has persisted from the start of the invasion I February 2022: Russia’s more modern combat aircraft have been difficult for Ukraine’s military to counter with its own aging fighters.”

Now, consider that the F-35 is more effective than the F-16. Indeed, concerning radar, situational awareness, data fusion, and interconnectivity, the F-35 is the world’s standard-bearer – offering an edge over Russian Su-35s and MiG-31s.

Don’t expect an F-35 donation to Ukraine

Ukraine should not expect F-35 donations. For one, the F-35 is expensive – almost twice as much per unit as an F-16 (about $100 million v. $63 million).

And the F-35 program, in total, is the most expensive weapons program in human history ($1.7 trillion).

American taxpayers, fatigued from bankrolling a foreign conflict that is entering its third year, are unlikely to support the donation of a $100 million dollar aircraft from a $1.7 trillion dollar program.

What Happens if Russia Kills an F-35? 

The US may be hesitant to send one of their preeminent weapons systems into combat, at the hands of relatively green, foreign pilots, against one of America’s primary rivals. A downed F-35 would be inevitable. And a downed F-35 could provide Russia with the chance to reverse engineer the fifth-generation jet.

Granted, Russia already has a fifth-generation fighter design (the Su-57, of which only ten or so exist), but any insights into the F-35 would be a win for Russia.

A Weak Russia 

Lastly, consider that the longer Russia is engaged in a conflict, the weaker Russia becomes with respect to military resources and political capital.

A weaker Russia benefits the US. So, logically, it follows that the US would prefer for Russia to remain engaged in conflict indefinitely.

So, providing Ukraine with game-changing weapons systems may not ultimately be in the US’s best interest. Now, that’s a somewhat abstract, hypothetical, and cynical take – and may not reflect the strategy of the US war planners. But it’s something to think about.

Regardless, don’t expect the Ukrainians to receive any F-35s.      

About the Author: Harrison Kass      Harrison Kass is a defense and national security writer with over 1,000 total pieces on issues involving global affairs. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken. You can email the Author: Editor@nationalinterest.org

The Federal Reserve’s Inflation Nightmare Won’t Go Away

The National Interest - Thu, 11/01/2024 - 17:57

When Henry Kissinger asked for his opinion about the influence of the French Revolution, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai purportedly replied that two hundred years on it was “too early to tell.” Something similar might be said about today’s key economic question. Was 2022’s burst of inflation to over 9 percent due to transitory factors like the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Or was it primarily due to the excessively expansive stance of budget and monetary policy?

The answer to the inflation question has considerable policy implications for the Federal Reserve.

If the burst in inflation was due to transitory factors, maybe the Fed did not need to slam on the monetary policy brakes as hard as it did last year to regain inflation control. Inflation would have slowed as the temporary supply disruptions wore off. If, on the other hand, 2022’s inflation was due to the Fed keeping interest rates too low for too long and allowing the money supply to balloon, maybe then the Fed’s current insistence on keeping interest rates high and allowing the money supply to contract will precipitate a recession and risk a bout of deflation.

Those arguing that 2022’s inflation was a transitory phenomenon can point to the supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the spike in food and energy prices that occurred due to Russia’s war with Ukraine. They would note that a large part of inflation’s acceleration was due to gasoline prices increasing to well over $4 per gallon and to used car prices going through the roof as a result of disruptions to the automobile supply chain.

They would argue that inflation’s downward movement last year towards the Fed’s 2 percent inflation target was largely the result of supply chain repairs and international oil price decreases as the result of a slowing world economy. According to this view, the Fed was not responsible for 2022’s inflation surge, and the Fed should not now be taking undue credit for inflation’s recent sharp deceleration. They would also note that inflation is coming down even though unemployment remains close to its all-time post-war low. 

The alternative view of inflation’s recent gyrations takes Milton Friedman’s famous dictum as its starting point: inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. According to this view, 2022’s inflation surge should have come as no surprise given the 40 percent cumulative increase in the broad money supply between the beginning of 2020 and the end of 2021. That unprecedented money supply burst directly resulted from the Fed keeping interest rates too low for too long and expanding its balance sheet by over $4 trillion to finance the government’s substantial Covid-related budget deficits. 

According to this inflation view, the Fed is now risking both sending the economy into recession and inviting a bout of deflation. It is doing so partly by keeping inflation-adjusted interest rates too high in the context of a slowing economy. More importantly, it is doing so by allowing the broad money supply to contract for the first time since the Fed started publishing these numbers in 1959.

Fortunately, unlike Zhou Enlai, we will not need to wait two hundred years to get an answer to our inflation question. Rather, we should have an answer by the end of this year. By then, we will know whether or not the economy experienced a meaningful recession and whether or not the deflation worries resurface. If we do experience meaningful deflation, the monetarists will be entitled to take a victory lap. If, on the other hand, we get a soft economic landing, those in the transitory inflation camp will be vindicated.

Unfortunately for the Fed, it will have to conduct monetary policy without a clear answer to the inflation question. It will have to hope that the monetarists are proven wrong and that it would not have endangered the economy by keeping interest rates too high and ignoring money supply developments. 

Desmond Lachman is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He was a deputy director in the International Monetary Fund’s Policy Development and Review Department and the chief emerging-market economic strategist at Salomon Smith Barney.

Image: Shutterstock. 

A-10: Why the Warthog Is Still the Best Tank Killer Ever Designed

The National Interest - Thu, 11/01/2024 - 17:16

The A-10 Warthog is not meant to be pretty or stealthy and does not pretend to be anything other than what it is: a plane designed to provide air cover and kill things like enemy armor.

And while many say this plane could not survive a war against a modern foe like China or Russia, the plane will not go away anytime soon. Why is that?

On 10 May 2022, the Fairchild Republic A-10 Warthog (officially the Thunderbolt II, named for the original P-47 Thunderbolt of WWII, which was flown by America’s top two highest-scoring air aces of the European Theatre, Francis “Gabby” Gabreski and Robert S. “Bob” Johnson) celebrated her 50th birthday, or as its pilots & crew chiefs (such as the Idaho Air National Guard’s 124th Fighter Wing) and legions of fans prefer to say, its 50th “BRRRT-Day,” in humorous and reverent homage to this golden warbird’s most salient—not to mention deadliest—feature, its tank-busting 30mm cannon.

So then, let’s examine just what makes this particular warplane so special.

The A-10 Warthog Wayback Machine

 To give readers a sense of historical perspective about the Warthog’s roots, as noted by Guns.Com columnist Chris Eger, “Nixon was in office, Roberta Flack’s ‘First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ was on the top of the charts – which is a beautiful coincidence considering the love the public has for the A-10 – and a gallon of milk cost 52 cents.” 

Moreover, at this time, the Soviet Union possessed roughly 50,000 tanks, while the American M1 Abrams main battle tank (MBT) was still eight years away from debuting. Though Dick Nixon’s détente policy was already underway, the fear of the USSR sending its massed troop and tank formations through the Fulda Gap still weighed heavily on U.S. policymakers’ minds. Therefore, the need for a tank-killing close air support (CAS) platform like the A-10 was genuine.

With 20/20 hindsight, we know now that the dreaded WWIII scenario never happened, thanks to, among other things, Nixon’s aforementioned détente, the Reagan Doctrine of rollback, and Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika. However, even before the Cold War officially ended, the Warthog would still get her baptism of fire on a far different battlefield than its designers originally envisioned: the desert sands of Iraq and Kuwait.

The A-10 Warthog was officially “blooded” during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, destroying more than 900 Iraqi tanks, 2,000 other military vehicles and 1,200 artillery pieces.  Two particular A-10A pilots, then-Captain Eric Solomonson and Lieutenant John Marks of the 76th Tactical Fighter Squadron/23rd Tactical Fighter Wing set a record of sorts by killing 23 of Saddam Hussein’s tanks in a single day!  Moreover, as I noted in my piece on the J-20 sometime back, during that same conflict, the Warthog laid claim to the last known air-to-air gun kill (as opposed to a missile kill) in aviation combat history. Thus the living legend of the Warthog was born and cemented.

What Makes the A-10 So Amazing 

What makes the Warthog so deadly?

Well, for starters, there are the AGM-65 Maverick missiles. Still, more significantly, there’s that aforementioned “BRRRT” factor, the GAU-8A Avenger cannon, a 30mm electric Gatling gun that delivers seven times the ballistic energy per round as the 20mm M61 Vulcans carried by other U.S. warplanes, doling out its deadly depleted uranium shells at a buzzsaw-like 4,200 rounds per minute.  Yes, the airplane is built around the gun.

Since then, the A-10 has served with distinction, from Bosnia to Kosovo to Afghanistan to Libya to Iraq Part Deux (Operation Iraqi Freedom). And while the Warthog drivers in these latter conflicts may not have racked up the MBT kill tally that their Desert Storm predecessors did, they certainly added to the other aspect that makes the beast so legendary: its incredible durability and survivability.

To cite just one example, then-Captain (now retired USAF Colonel) Kim “K(iller)C(hick)” Campbell, during a mission over downtown Baghdad on 07 April 2003, was hit by enemy ground fire that completely knocked out her airplane’s hydraulics and damaged one engine, in addition to disabling the flight controls, landing gear & breaks, and horizontal stabilizer, not to mention leaving hundreds of holes in the airframe. Amazingly enough, Campbell was able to put the plane into manual reversion and fly the crippled Hog safely back to base an hour away. For her heroic actions, she was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Given this fantastic track record of being able to take punishment and dish it out, it is no wonder that many experts are decrying efforts to phase out the A-10. We can only hope that these voices of reason will be heeded by the senior decision-makers in the Pentagon.

About the Author 

Christian D. Orr is a former Air Force officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon).  Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU).  He has also been published in The Daily Torch and The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security. Email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org

F-14 Tomcat: Why Iran and the U.S. Navy Both Love This Fighter Jet

The National Interest - Thu, 11/01/2024 - 17:06

The F-14 Tomcat is clearly a fighter based on Cold War needs and designs. It is also clearly not stealth like the F-22, F-35, or upcoming NGAD platform. And yet, the public just can't get enough of this old fighter jet. Why is that exactly? Why are we so fascinated by it?

In my recent article on the SR-72 spy plane, I mentioned the mysterious plane’s Hollywood-embellished appearance in Top Gun: Maverick, the long-awaited sequel to the original 1986 box office blockbuster.

Not surprisingly, the sequel has also regenerated interest in the venerable F-14 Tomcat, the warbird in which a then-young Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, played by Tom Cruise, earned his combat spurs and took our breath away.

F-14 Aces of “The Axis of Evil”

Though not quite as impressive as the F-15 Eagle’s mind-blowing 104:0 air-to-air kill ratio, the Tomcat has a very respectable air-to-air combat performance history.

Perhaps the greatest irony of the Tomcat’s kill tally is that the majority of its scores were achieved not by American pilots, nor even the pilots of a U.S. ally, but rather by the pilots of an adversary nation.

Not just any U.S. adversary, either, but one deemed by then-President George W. Bush to be a member of the “Axis of Evil:” Iran. (Granted, Iran’s F-14s are carryovers from when that nation was actually still a U.S. ally.)

No American Tomcat drivers attained ace status (5 or more aerial victories), but at least one Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force pilot did. IRIAF pilot Col. Mostafa Roustaie, who scored five kills against Iraqi opponents during the Iran-Iraq War, described his beloved plane as “the last word in the fighter business.”

All in all, IRIAF pilots claimed 130 victories versus only 4 losses. However, as noted by aviation expert Tom Cooper in Smithsonian Magazine, “It is impossible to tabulate, for example, how many air-to-air victories were scored by Iranian F-14s because air force records were repeatedly tampered with during and after the war for political, religious, or even personal reasons.”

As for those lucky few Iraqi pilots who managed to kill a Tomcat – rare birds, indeed – the admittedly scanty evidence indicates that two of them did so in a MiG-23 Flogger, while one kill apiece is credited to a Dassault Mirage F1 and a MiG-21 Fishbed.

Iran remains the only nation flying active F-14s. According to estimates in 2019, Iran’s air force maintains 24 F-14 Tomcats from the original batch of 79.

What About America?

As for the total kills scored by U.S. Navy Tomcat fliers, that tally is 5: two Libyan Sukhoi Su-22 Fitter jets downed during the 1981 Gulf of Sidra incident; two Libyan MiG-23 Floggers killed during the 1989 Gulf of Sidra incident; and one Iraqi Mi-8 Hip helicopter downed during Operation Desert Storm in 1991.

No U.S. Navy-flown F-14s have ever been lost in aerial combat, though one F-14 was lost to enemy ground fire during Desert Storm. Its pilot, Lt. Devon Jones, was rescued the next day, while his radar intercept officer, Lt. Lawrence Slade, ended up as a prisoner for the remainder of the war. (Unlike the ill-fated Goose from the original Top Gun film, Mr. Slade lived to tell the tale.)

The F-14 made her maiden flight on Dec. 21, 1970, and officially entered service on Sept. 22, 1974, with the U.S. Navy aboard the USS Enterprise. The aircraft was finally retired from service on the 32nd anniversary of its debut, Sept. 22, 2006.

F-14 Specifications:

Crew: 2 (Pilot and radar intercept officer)

Length: 62 ft 9 in (19.13 m)

Wingspan: 64 ft 1.5 in (19.545 m)

Swept wingspan: 38 ft 2.5 in (11.646 m) swept

Height: 16 ft (4.9 m)

Wing area: 565 sq ft (52.5 sq m) wings only

1,008 sq ft (94 sq m) effective area including fuselage

Maximum speed: Mach 2.34 (1,544 mph, 2,485 km/h) at altitude

Range: 1,600 nmi (1,800 mi, 3,000 km)

Combat range: 500 nmi (580 mi, 930 km)

Service ceiling: 53,000 ft (16,000 m)-plus

Armament: 1× 20 mm (0.787 in) M61A1 Vulcan 6-barreled Gatling cannon, with 675 rounds; AIM-54 Phoenix (the Tomcat’s most unique and exclusive feature) , AIM-7 Sparrow, AIM-9 Sidewinder

About the Author

Christian D. Orr is a former Air Force officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon).  He has also been published in The Daily Torch and The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security.

What Was the Largest 'Elephant Walk' Ever Conducted?

The National Interest - Thu, 11/01/2024 - 16:59

Earlier this month, eight of the legendary U-2 "Dragon Lady" spy planes were lined up in an "Elephant Walk" at Beale Air Force Base (AFB), California as part of the United States Air Force's efforts to showcase the joint airpower of the multiple wings stationed at the facility. It may not have been the largest such "elephant walks," the term for taxiing numerous aircraft before takeoff – yet it was likely a sight to behold.

In addition to the close formation on the ground, it can involve a minimum interval takeoff.

The first elephant walks occurred during the Second World War when large fleets of allied bombers massed for attacks – and observers on the ground noted that as the aircraft lined up, it resembled the nose-to-tail formations of elephants walking to a watering hole.

Today, the U.S. Air Force employs elephant walks to show the capability of a unit as well as the teamwork that is required to conduct such an operation. It also can help pilots prepare for the launching of fully armed aircraft in a mass event if needed.

So what was the largest "Elephant Walk" ever conducted? The answer could be a bit tricky – as it could involve not only the number of aircraft but the size and capabilities as well.

Four Thousand Student Elephant Walk Biggest Ever? 

It was last spring that 4,000 student Airmen from the 82nd Training Wing shared the runway with 80 training aircraft from the 80th Flying Training Wing at Sheppard Air Force Base (AFB), Texas, in possibly the largest and most unique "elephant walk" in Air Force history. It was conducted to shine a light on the importance of training and partnerships.

"The key to airpower is exceptional Airmen, and the key to exceptional Airmen is exceptional training," said Brig. Gen. Lyle K. Drew, 82nd TW commander. "That's what we do here at Sheppard [AFB], and this elephant walk was our message to the world that the U.S. and its international partners remain committed to delivering the best-trained Airmen in the world."

Sheppard AFB is home to three of the eight technical training groups in the Air Force as well as Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training, while it is also home to the service's largest Noncommissioned Officer Academy.

"No other base could bring this many training aircraft and student Airmen to bear like this," said Col. Brad Orgeron, 80th FTW commander. "The fundamental technical and pilot training missions that happen here every day affect literally every base and every combat sortie in the Air Force – not to mention the impact on our global partners."

Elephant Walk: How About 70 F-15s?

Another contender for the largest elephant walk was one conducted at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., on April 16, 2012, involving nearly seventy F-15 Strike Eagles from the United States Air Force's 4th Fighter Wing – with aircrews assigned to the 4th Fighter Wing's 333rd, 334th, 335th, and 336th Fighter Squadrons.

The fourth-generation aircraft had lined up on the runway during a Turkey Shoot training mission, in which the more than five dozen aircraft successfully destroyed in excess of 1,000 targets on bombing ranges across the state to commemorate the 4th's victory over the Luftwaffe on April 16, 1945.

The Billion Dollar Elephant Walk

Another contender for the most impressive elephant walk occurred in January 2020, when the United States Air Force's Active Duty 388th and Reserve 419th Fighter Wings conducted the Combat Power Exercise at Hill AFB, Utah, with 52 Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II 35As – the conventional takeoff and landing variant of the U.S. military's Joint Strike Fighter.

The elephant walk of the F-35 Lightning IIs was employed to demonstrate the "ability to employ a large force of F-35As" as well as to test the air wing's readiness for personnel accountability, aircraft generation, ground operations, flight operations, and combat capability, according to a Hill statement from the time.

Though the U.S. Air Force's press photos may have looked to many like little more than a number of aircraft lined up, the exercise had been planned for months. As TheDrive.com reported, "The amount of hardware on the runway in terms of billions of dollars is staggering."

It was also likely quite an expensive show of force. If each of the 52 F-35 fighters in the elephant walk flew for just a single hour, it was still a $2 million-plus exercise. Yet, it could be described as truly priceless.

The ability to launch 52 of the fifth-generation F-35 stealth fighters was as much to send a message to detractors of the program within the United States as it was to reaffirm the capabilities of the U.S. Air Force to near-peer adversaries such as China and Russia.

Show Some Serious Spirit

While it may not have been the largest elephant walk in terms of the number of aircraft, last November eight Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirits lined up on the runway at Whiteman AFB, Missouri, at the culmination of the recent Spirit Vigilance 22 training exercise.

Aircraft from the 509th and 131st Bomb Wings took part in an “elephant walk” before a series of training and readiness drills. The Spirits lined up in close formation on the runway before taking off at short intervals. The routine showcased the availability of the aircraft and served as a demonstration of power.

Given that just twenty B-2s are in service, the display included about 40% of the total Spirit fleet. With eight bombers on the runway at roughly $2 Billion a piece, it drew approximately $16 Billion in stealth bombers to a single location.

That is might no other nation on earth could showcase.

Author Experience and Expertise: Peter Suciu

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. Email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org

Blast from the Past: How Old Naval Mines Could Reshape Modern Warfare

The National Interest - Thu, 11/01/2024 - 16:46

Mines have a long history of reshaping naval warfare, both by damaging individual ships and by countering the actions of entire fleets. Remarkably, though, one way to make them even more effective is to take a “back to the future” approach in which vintage mine technologies, even some dating a century or more, are employed alongside modern capabilities. 

Even relatively unsophisticated mines have been used to prevent ship movements from Vietnam to the English Channel, while also thwarting amphibious assaults from the gates of Istanbul to the coasts of Korea. From 1988 through 1991, mines damaged three U.S. warships and many civilian ones in the Persian Gulf.

Most recently, Ukraine has used naval mines to help invasion of Odesa. Mines can help to negate the superior power of enemy fleets not only by directly damaging their ships, but by inducing them to avoid key waters or to engage in mine-countermeasures efforts that delay and disrupt their plans. For example, naval mines could help to stymie a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, hindering China’s ability to rapidly deliver a massive force ashore. In locations across the globe, naval mines could also be used to trap hostile submarines in port. They can also be used to impose “sanctions with a bite” by precluding an aggressor from using specific waterways until certain conditions are met. 

The U.S. military is working to develop its currently vestigial naval mining capabilities. It has a handful of air-dropped bottom influence mines, which sit on the seafloor and detonate when they sense a ship’s characteristic sounds or magnetism overhead. The U.S. is working on mines that can be delivered clandestinely or can be released from aircraft at long ranges from the target area. In addition, the U.S. is developing mines that can launch torpedoes when they detect a ship’s presence, a capability that it first developed towards the end of the Cold War. 

Burnishing capabilities from the 1980s, though, could be only the beginning. A very effective way of complementing today’s advanced mines is by employing mine technology that dates back a century or even more. Moored contact mines that detonate on impact, like the “spiky balls” used in World War I, require different modalities of mine countermeasures (MCM) from bottom influence mines. Sonar searches for moored and bottom mines have to be conducted sequentially, while moored contact mines are immune to ship emulating MCM gear that attempts to prematurely detonate influence mines. 

For the U.S., scattering a few moored contact mines among a larger number of bottom influence mines would require additional MCM efforts to counteract both, protracting clearance timelines. If an adversary did not undertake MCM against moored contact mines, because it was not aware of their usage, it would likely lose ships and then have to belatedly address that secondary threat. Throughout these protracted and perhaps confused MCM operations, MCM forces and other ships would be vulnerable to U.S. targeting. 

Similarly, old-fashioned drifting mines can be tremendously disruptive to an adversary’s fleet actions or its MCM efforts against fixed mines. Under international law, drifting mines must neutralize themselves within one hour of release. However, under the right circumstances, they can do a lot of mischief within that single hour. Slightly submerged drifting mines could be released from uncrewed undersea vehicles or low-visibility uncrewed surface vehicles just up current from a fleet or from MCM forces tackling a fixed minefield

The technology involved is very old: the U.S. first used drifting mines that detonate on contact in 1777. Drifting mines could help to disrupt a fleet as it was trying to maintain formation or adhering to channels where MCM had previously been conducted. Available tactics against drifting mines are mostly risible, consisting of having people try to spot incoming mines, then trying to avoid and/or shoot them. The result is that ships would be continually damaged by an invisible threat, with no meaningful capacity to counter it. 

A third approach is to use remotely controlled mines that have a hard-wired connection to a facility on land. Controllers at that facility can decide whether to detonate a mine when a ship approaches one of them or could simply activate (or de-activate) a set of influence mines that respond to ship signatures. Again, the U.S. has been here before: at the turn of the 20th century it protected ports with remotely controlled minefields. Today, coastal nations such as Taiwan and the Baltic states could employ such minefields to better protect their shores from hostile fleets. Having numerous, distributed links between individual mines and various shore locations can reduce vulnerability to both the severing of cables and the targeting of the control facilities themselves. Remotely controlled mines are relatively impervious to typical MCM tactics, while any MCM assets would be highly vulnerable to various shore-based defenses. 

Overall, while naval mine warfare benefits from technological development, employing a few old-style mines can be a useful complement to modern capabilities. The low costs associated with naval mines may be further reduced by constructing some with century-old technology. Some other nations already use seemingly antiquated mines: Russia’s M08 moored contact mine is named for the year of its development—1908. By using moored contact, drifting, or remotely controlled naval mines in combination with advanced counterparts, the U.S. and other nations can inexpensively help to counter prospective aggressors as part of a range of naval defenses. 

About the Author

Dr. Scott Savitz is a Senior Engineer at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.

This article was first published by RealClearDefense.

Columbia-Class: The Navy's New $132 Billion Submarine Could Be a Game Changer

The National Interest - Thu, 11/01/2024 - 16:42

First Columbia-class Submarine Stern Delivered - Progress is moving forward on the future USS District of Columbia (SSBN-826), the lead boat of the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine. This week HII's Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) announced that it had delivered the stern for the sub by barge from Newport News to Electric Boat's facility in Quonset Point, Rhode Island.

"This is a major milestone in the ramp-up of Columbia-class module production here at NNS," said Brandi Smith, NNS vice president of Columbia -class submarine construction. "Our shipbuilders have worked with pride to accomplish this milestone, and we look forward to continuing our commitment to this important national security program."

NNS is a major shipbuilding partner in the Columbia-class program, constructing and delivering six module sections per submarine under contract to Electric Boat.

Second Most Expensive Pentagon Program

The U.S. Navy will spend around $132 billion for the procurement of the dozen submarines, while the total lifecycle cost for the entire class is estimated at $347 billion. That figure includes all projected costs to develop, buy, and operate the 12 submarines through 2042.

In its Fiscal Year 2019 (FY19) request, U.S. Navy officials asked for $3.7 billion for the Columbia class program – a 97 percent increase over 2018, making it the second-most expensive program in the 2019 Pentagon budget request, next to the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which is operated by the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps.

Columbia-Class: Largest U.S. Submarines to Date

The new SSBNs will be the largest submarines ever built by the United States. Each of the planned dozen boats will be 560 feet in length and have a beam of 43 feet.

The Columbia -class will be equipped with sixteen SLBM tubes, as opposed to twenty-four SLBM tubes on Ohio-class SSBNs. That will also reduce construction, operations, and maintenance costs. In addition, the new boats will utilize the joint American-British developed Common Missile Compartment (CMC), which will also be installed on the Royal Navy's new Dreadnought-class submarines. It was designed to launch the Trident II D5 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The joint effort has been reported to save each nation hundreds of millions of dollars.

The new submarines will be longer, heavier, and feature a complex electric drive propulsion system and associated technology.

Unlike the preceding Ohio-class, the new ballistic missile submarines are being constructed with a life-of-ship reactor, which will result in a shorter mid-life maintenance period, and each was designed to serve a forty-two-year service life.

This will further allow the dozen Columbia-class SSBNs to replace the existing fourteen Ohio-class boats – and reduce overall upfront procurement costs.

The program has also been utilizing techniques that were refined during the construction of the Virginia-class to maximize the efficiency of assembling the complex hulls while meeting a timeline with razor-thin margins.

Columbia-Class: On the Way – But Running Late?

The new Columbia-class is now being constructed by General Dynamic subsidiary Electric Boat for the U.S. Navy in collaboration with NNS.

The defense contractor cut the first steel for the lead boat in May 2019 – while construction of the submarine officially began in October 2020, while on June 4, 2022, Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) declared the keel laid for the future USS District of Columbia (SSBN-826).

It was reported in May that the shipbuilder had not conducted a schedule risk analysis of the lead submarine's construction schedule, an issue that was first identified by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The D.C.-based watchdog laid out several recommendations to keep the program running on track.

However, another issue was noted by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in October 2023 – which found that the program risks running at least 20 percent over budget, or about $20 billion.

"CBO estimates that total shipbuilding costs would average about $34 billion to $36 billion (in 2023 dollars) over the next 30 years, which is about 16 percent more than the Navy estimates. Compared with its estimates for the 2023 plan, CBO's estimates increased by between 5 percent and 10 percent in real (inflation-adjusted) terms, depending on the alternative," the nonpartisan government watchdog group warned.

The United States Navy has designated the Columbia-class its top acquisition priority, as the boats will replace the fleet of again Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, and take over the role of the nation's sea-based strategic deterrent – seen as the most survivable leg of the nation's strategic triad.

Originally known as the Ohio Replacement Program (ORP) or SSBN(X), until 2016, the lead boat of the class (SSBN-826) will be named to honor the District of Columbia, while the second sub of the class will be named USS Wisconsin (SSBN-827).

Author Experience and Expertise: Peter Suciu 

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org 

Russia Wants a New Aircraft Carrier (You Can Start Laughing Now)

The National Interest - Thu, 11/01/2024 - 16:31

Russia's Naval Chief Wants a New Aircraft Carrier – He's Not Dreaming, He's in Fantasy Land - The head of the Russian Navy has suggested that a new aircraft carrier could be in the works – yet, the Kremlin has struggled with the refit for its sole flattop. However, Commander-in-Chief Admiral Nikolay Yevmenov told the state-run Krasnaya Zvezda daily news outlet that plans for a new aircraft carrier are underway.

"The issue of the expediency of creating a prospective naval aircraft carrying complex has been addressed. Its engagement will increase the effectiveness of various operational tasks," suggested Yevmenov, as reported by Tass.

He further suggested that the main "brown-water force" comprises warships that combine antisubmarine and attack capabilities. These include corvettes such as the Russian Navy's Steregushchy and the Gremyashchy and small missile ships like the Grad Sviyazhsk.

Blue-water warships comprise frigates, patrol ships, and universal amphibious assault ships that can provide over-the-horizon assault landing, the naval chief added. The development of minesweepers made of composite materials with modern mine searching and sweeping means will continue.

Yevmenov gave no timeline on when such a future carrier could enter service, or even where it could be built. Russia has struggled to refit the flagship Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Kuznetsov, and during it now odyssey-long time undergoing a modernization, which involved a crane falling on the flight deck, while it further suffered multiple fires, and seen its completion date pushed back on numerous occasions.

There has been increased scrutiny, and some Western observers have doubted the carrier will ever be returned to service. The problem-plagued warship was meant to be a symbol of pride for Moscow, but it has often been the butt of numerous jokes – often with good reason. At one point, the Kremlin did consider a replacement, yet likely, the warship will never sail.

Russia Always Wants a New Aircraft Carrier to Replace Admiral Kuznetsov

Yevmenov's calls for a new carrier aren't the first time that such a project has figuratively been floated – even though no actual warship has moved past the decisions stage. As previously reported, in 2018, it was announced that the Russian Navy had begun to explore options for a new aircraft carrier.

According to GlobalSecurity.org, one option was focused on a conventionally powered vessel with a displacement of around 70,000 tons – slightly larger than the 58,600-67,500 tons full load Project 1143.5 Admiral Kuznetsov. Another option called for a nuclear-powered carrier, with a larger displacement. That would be bigger than the 42,000-ton French Navy flagship Charles de Gaulle – the only non-U.S. Navy nuclear-powered carrier – yet not likely as large as the 100,000-ton American supercarriers.

The new "Shtorm" aircraft carrier – a.k.a. Project 23000E – was to be included in Russia's armament program for the 2019 to 2025 period.

To say that little to no progress has been made on the Shtorm is a vast understatement, and there is little to no chance that Moscow will be launching a new carrier anytime in the next decade.

Old Aircraft Carrier Back From China?

It was also just a year ago that some Russian lawmakers suggested that Moscow should turn to Beijing to buy back the unfinished Soviet-era flattop that Ukraine sold to China following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

While no official request has been made, it would also likely best be described as a dead in the water.

It seems that some in the Kremlin are like children with wish lists for Santa Claus that vastly exceed the means of their parents. They're likely to be as disappointed as those children when their dreams aren't fulfilled, but unlike children, they should understand the reality of the situation.

As it stands, Moscow will be hard-pressed to see Admiral Kuznetsov even return to service, at least as a capable warship. It is therefore simply a fantasy to believe that the Russian Navy will ever be a true blue water force with a capable aircraft carrier that isn't the mockery of the world.

Author Experience and Expertise: Peter Suciu 

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org

Image Credit: Shutterstock and Creative Commons. 

X-59: NASA's New Supersonic Plane Could Be an Incredible Game Changer

The National Interest - Thu, 11/01/2024 - 16:13

The future of commercial supersonic flight will be unveiled on Friday at the famed Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, California. Lockheed Martin and NASA executives, along with subject matter experts, and California and Federal Government officials will be present as the NASA X-59 is rolled out.

Designed and built by Lockheed Martin at its famed Skunk Works facility, the X-59 is specifically shaped to quiet the perceived sound of a sonic boom that reaches the ground to that of a gentle thump, similar to a car door shutting in the distance.

"This is the big reveal," said Catherine Bahm, manager of NASA's Low Boom Flight Demonstrator project, who is overseeing the development and build of the X-59. "The rollout is a huge milestone toward achieving the overarching goal of the Quesst mission to quiet the sonic boom."

The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA's Quesst mission, which has the goal of collecting community response data from flights over representative communities across the United States. NASA will employ that data to recommend an acceptable commercial supersonic noise standard to regulators to possibly repeal the current ban on supersonic flight over land and thereby change the future of commercial aviation, reducing flight times by half of what they are currently.

"Watch the unveiling of @NASAAero's X-59 aircraft, set to fly this year to test quieter supersonic flight technology. The Quesst mission could help bring a return to supersonic air travel over land. Livestream starts Friday, Jan. 12 at 4pm ET (2100 UTC)," @NASA announced on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, earlier this month.

X-59 Ground Tests in Texas

Last year, the X-plane completed a series of ground tests at Lockheed Martin's Fort Worth, Texas, facility to ensure the aircraft's ability to withstand the loads and stresses of supersonic flight – or flight at speeds faster than Mach 1. During the tests, the X-59's fuel systems were also calibrated and tested at Lockheed Martin's Ft. Worth facilities. Since the airplane wasn't actually flying, tests were conducted with the aircraft sitting on hydraulic jacks that were connected directly to the structure.

In addition, structural and fuel calibration tests were completed on the aircraft in preparation for final integration and taxi testing back in Palmdale.

However, because the aircraft couldn't fly to the facilities, there had been logistical challenges to complete the tests. While the aircraft was built in California, it had to be shipped by truck to Texas in December 2022.

NASA's goal is to collect and provide data to U.S. regulators to help establish an acceptable commercial supersonic noise standard and to lift the ban on commercial supersonic travel over land, which could reduce cross-country flight times drastically.

The United States banned supersonic travel over land for non-military aircraft in 1973 due to public concern about sonic booms over populated areas, CBS News reported. NASA has continued to study transoceanic supersonic flight, which could in theory shuttle passengers from New York City to London in less than two hours.

"We're definitely ready to write a new chapter in the history of supersonic flight, making air travel over land twice as fast, but in a way that is safe, sustainable, and so much quieter than before," Peter Coen, NASA's Quesst Mission Integration Manager, said in a statement in April.

The advanced is scheduled to take flight this year. Once fully operational and tested, NASA plans to fly the aircraft over select U.S. cities in 2026 and gather feedback from the public on the sound it produces.

Author Experience and Expertise: Peter Suciu 

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author at Editor@nationalinterest.org

Charging Israel with Genocide is Orwellian

The National Interest - Thu, 11/01/2024 - 16:01

Three months after a genocidal, anti-semitic terrorist group slaughtered 1,200 of its citizens in a barbaric fashion, Israel sits in the docket of the International Court of Justice, accused of committing genocide because it hasn’t defended itself from future attack as pristinely as the world demands.

The court is holding hearings this week on an application that South Africa filed in late December, asking the court to begin proceedings against Israel for committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

“Acts and omissions by Israel,” South Africa wrote, “... are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent... to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group,” putting Israel “in violation of its obligations under the Genocide Convention.”

It is a quintessentially Orwellian affair, a spectacle of the victim as the perpetrator, and it fits within a longstanding pattern of the global community holding the singular Jewish state to a singular human rights standard. No one should buy it.

In its “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” the United Nations General Assembly defined genocide as action “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

Ironically, it is Hamas, created in 1987 as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, which has set out to commit that very crime—against Israel and the Jewish people.

In its covenant of 1988, Hamas states, “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious...  The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah's victory is realised [sic].”

“The Islamic Resistance Movement,” it continues, “is one of the links in the chain of the struggle against the Zionist invaders,” and it “aspires to the realisation of Allah's promise... The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees.”

Some thirty-five years later, the group has lost none of its genocidal luster. After October 7, when Hamas’ terrorists beheaded men, slaughtered babies, raped women, desecrated bodies, and, in some cases, took videos of their deeds. The group's deputy foreign minister, Ghazi Hamad, vowed to repeat such attacks until Israel is destroyed.

Where does Israel fit into this maelstrom?

The Jewish State unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, leaving it to the Palestinian Authority. Two years later, Hamas seized Gaza in a violent coup and ruled its two million residents with an iron fist, brooking no dissent and murdering those who work with or seek peace with Israel.

Israel responded to the barbarism of October 7 as one might expect, vowing to destroy the terrorist group so it could never again attack the Jewish state. What Israel is promising is nothing more than any responsible government would pursue in the aftermath of such an attack by such a group.

Israel’s military campaign is multi-faceted, arduous, and, yes, bloody. What began with heavy bombing has morphed into a harrowing firefight. But, notwithstanding the charge of genocide that Israel’s critics around the world are so quick to level, who’s really trying to boost civilian casualties?

While searching for Hamas operatives, Israel’s military has dropped leaflets, made phone calls, and sent texts, warning Palestinians to flee areas where it plans to mount operations. That is no different than what Israel has done for years during its multiple wars and skirmishes with Hamas.

Hamas, as usual, embeds its fighters and weaponry in schools, hospitals, and mosques, purposely boosting civilian casualties to swing global public opinion against Israel. Hamas has told Palestinians to ignore Israel’s warnings to flee or has prevented them from doing so. One Hamas official suggested that civilians serve as human shields, sacrificing themselves to protect Hamas’ assets.

This week’s spectacle in The Hague is part of a larger international picture, marked by an obsession with the Jewish state.

With war raging in Ukraine and elsewhere and autocrats brutalizing their people all over the world, the General Assembly last year condemned Israel fourteen times and the rest of the world just seven.

Meanwhile, the UN’s Human Rights Council remains a cesspool of anti-Israeli activity that has 1) made Israel its only permanent agenda item and 2) condemned and subjected it to more special sessions and commissions than any other country. The council has passed no resolutions to condemn human rights abuses in such nations as Algeria, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and Zimbabwe.

Are innocent Palestinians dying in Gaza? Yes. Is Israel seeking to wipe out the Palestinians, as per the charge of genocide? No. The allegation is either rooted in willful blindness or moral bankruptcy—or both.

About the Author

Lawrence J. Haas is a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council and the author of, most recently, The Kennedys in the World: How Jack, Bobby, and Ted Remade America’s Empire (Potomac Books).

Image: Creative Commons. 

Alaska-Class Battlecruiser: The U.S. Navy's Biggest Warship Mistake?

The National Interest - Thu, 11/01/2024 - 14:17

Summary: This article discusses the Alaska-class battlecruisers, which the United States developed before World War II to counter German "pocket battleships." These ships were initially designed to be heavily armed cruisers powered by all-diesel propulsion. However, they faced a complex design process with numerous alterations. The Alaska-class battlecruisers did not fulfill their intended role due to changing military priorities, but their design would have been dominant in World War I.

Alaska-Class battlecruiser profile

Prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, the U.S. wanted to emulate Germany’s hybrid “pocket battleships.”

These heavily armed cruisers were innovative for the time, powered by all-diesel propulsion and constructed by welding.

The Deutschland, Admiral Scheer and Admiral Grad Spee were deployed to the Atlantic before World War II erupted and put in a position to attack Allied merchant traffic.

The U.S. desired its own warships that could better counter this German trio, which resulted in the development of the Alaska-class battlecruiser.

However, when these new ships entered service, they were rendered technologically obsolete.

An overview of the Alaska-Class

Following World War I, the U.S., Britain, France, Japan and Italy all signed the Washington Naval Treaty along with other similar agreements.

These treaties dictated that the displacement of heavy cruisers was limited to 10,000 tons. In the late 1930s, it was rumored that Japan was beginning to design its copycat version of Germany’s pocket battleships.

U.S. intelligence on the matter suggested that the new vessels would be way more potent than America’s heavy cruisers.

In 1940, the U.S. passed the Vinson-Walsh Act- also known as the Two-Ocean Treaty, which immediately increased the size of the Navy by 70%.

Around this time, the General Board requested that the Bureau of Construction and Repair carry out a study involving the types of naval vessels up for consideration in an expanded building program.

While building a new cruiser class was expensive, costing $74 million per vessel in 1941 dollars, the Navy required new boats to fight a two-front war.

The design process of the Alaska-Class ships was not “smooth sailing”

A litany of alterations and modifications made to the initial Alaska-class design made the whole process “torturous,” according to historians. The CA2-D cruiser was the first Alaska design to surface.

As detailed by Naval General Board, “It was also the largest. At 850′ in length at the waterline and with a waterline beam of 99′ (Overall beam was 104′ 6″). This resulted in a standard displacement of 38,700 tons, greater than that allowed for treaty battleships (Though at the time of the CA2-D design the “Escalator Clause” was in effect, allowing for battleships of up to 45,000 tons).”

The Alaska ships’ larger size enabled for a more formidable armament. Her primary firepower would have been a dozen guns in four triple turrets. The CA2-D cruiser featured two mounts on the centerline that fired over primary turrets. Additionally, dual-purpose guns were fitted to give them enhanced firing arcs to cover targets forward and aft of the vessel.

Four-shaft General Electric steam turbines, eight Babcock & Wilcox boilers, and double-reduction gearing powered the battlecruiser. This propulsion system was good for roughly 150,000 horsepower, a maximum speed of 33 knots, and a range between 12 and 14,000 nautical miles.

What triggered the Alaska-Class’ downfall?

The Navy completed its first two Alaska-class cruisers in late 1944.

The Alaska and Guam did not receive their first mission until 1945, when the two boats were used for shore bombardment and escort duty.

By the time the few Alaska-class ships entered service in the Pacific Theatre, Japan was largely already defeated thanks to the Navy’s aircraft carriers and submarines.

A planned third ship- the Hawaii- was never completed. The Alaska supported the landings on Okinawa and the Alaska was deployed to protect the Essex-class aircraft carrier.

Ultimately, these ships never filled the role they were designed to fulfill. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. military shifted its focus to prioritize the construction of aircraft carriers instead of hefty battleships and cruisers. Carrier-borne aviation had become the leading tenant of warfare at the time, rendering the Alaska-class cruisers as dated.

Really A Battlecruiser? 

By 1947, the ships were decommissioned after only serving for less than two years. While the ship’s record is short, analysts and military experts still debate the right designation for the Alaska-class.

As explained by the National World War II museum, “Due to the uniqueness of the Alaska-class design, these ships were not classified “CA” as typical for heavy cruisers, but instead “CB” for large cruiser. Also, as a nod to their not-quite-battleship, not-quite-cruiser roots, instead of being named after US states or cities, the ships were named after US territories with the USS Alaska (CB-1) being the first. The rest of the class would be the USS Guam (CB-2), USS Hawaii (CB-3), USS Philippines (CB-4), USS Puerto Rico (CB-5), and USS Samoa (CB-6).”

Although the Alaska-class tragically did not live up to expectations, if these vessels had been introduced in World War I they indeed would have dominated the seas.

About the Author: Maya Carlin

Maya Carlin, National Security Writer with The National Interest, is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin. Email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org

Europe Might Have a Way to Get Ukraine 1 Million Artillery Shells This Year

The National Interest - Thu, 11/01/2024 - 14:04

“I follow the Moskva down to Gorky Park, Listening to the wind of change, An August summer night, soldiers passing by, Listening to the wind of change.”

In 1990, the German rock band “Scorpions” released their single “Winds of Change.” An instant worldwide hit, the song called for the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany. 

Soon after its release, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Europe let out a long sigh of relief. The specter of nuclear warfare a distant memory, the Continent focused on its economy to enter the future. 

More than 30 years later, trouble once more came from the east. Russia fully invaded Ukraine, casting cold shadows over Europe and prompting action among its countries.

The latest proposal to come out from Brussels is to allocate almost $110 billion for the creation of a common defense fund. 

A Common Pot of Cash 

This week, European Union Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton revealed a plan to create a massive defense fund for the members of the European Union. Funds from the €100 billion fund would boost joint weapons procurement program and ramp up domestic arms and ammunition production. 

“I believe we have to have a huge defense fund to help to accelerate, even probably in the amount of €100 billion,” Breton, who also leads the European Union’s defense policy, said on Tuesday. 

For the European official’s proposal to go forward, the member states would first have to agree, and then the European Council would have to greenlight the final course of action. 

However, the European Union official’s proposal has been getting some flak from the defense ministers of individual member states. 

“I’m not happy when I see some defense ministers saying we will not be able to deliver, this is not the kind of information you give when there is a war on your Continent,” the European Union official added. 

We Need More Ammo!

Perhaps the most sought-after piece of ammunition right now are 155mm artillery shells. The Ukrainian military depends on its Western partners for a steady flow of such munitions for both its offensive and defensive operations against the Russian forces.

At certain points during the fighting, especially around its counteroffensive, the Ukrainian military was expending more than 7,000 artillery shells on a single day.

To be sure, that number is lower during defensive operations, but still, the Ukrainian forces need thousands of artillery shells every day. 

The European Union has promised to deliver 1 million artillery shells to Ukraine by the spring of 2024. However, with the deadline looming, the European defense industry is struggling to meet the gargantuan demands of the Ukrainian conflict

The war in Ukraine has shown how fragile is the ammunition production chain in the West. The United States, NATO, and the European Union are “suffering” from prolonged periods of relative peace and haven’t had to create the necessary infrastructure to produce large numbers of quality ammunition quickly. 

About the Author

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense and national security journalist specializing in special operations. A Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), he holds a BA from the Johns Hopkins University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His work has been featured in Business InsiderSandboxx, and SOFREP. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org

Ukraine Needs a New Counteroffensive to Beat Russia

The National Interest - Thu, 11/01/2024 - 13:52

Although it is still early, the Ukrainian military should already be working on its new counteroffensive. 

Right now, the conflict in Ukraine resembles a soccer match that has gone on to extra time. Both sides are tired and have made most of their substitutions. But there is no winner yet, and the prospect of a penalty shootout doesn’t really appeal to either side. So, both sides will try to score that golden goal in extra time and claim the prize. 

In military terms, that goal is an operational breakthrough. Both sides failed to achieve that in the latest round of operations. The Ukrainian counteroffensive faltered, opening the way for the Russian military to launch its own large-scale offensive, forcing the Ukrainians to abandon their operation and focus men and resources on the defense. Thus, 2023 came to an end. 

A Failed Counteroffensive for Ukraine

Last June, the Ukrainian military launched its long-awaited large-scale counteroffensive in southern Ukraine and the Donbas. 

The Ukrainian military, in close cooperation with NATO, spent months preparing several heavy brigades for the operation.

A renewed flow of Western military aid equipped the Ukrainian formations with advanced heavy weapon systems, including Challenger 2, Leopard 2, and Leopard 1 main battle tanks, AMX-10 RC tank-killers, M2 Bradley and CV90 infantry fighting vehicles, and many artillery pieces

In addition, thousands of Ukrainian troops underwent basic and combined arms training by NATO instructors. With Russian morale and discipline in shambles, hopes for the Ukrainian counteroffensive were high. Its goal was to punch through the Russian defenses and sprint to the coast of the Sea of Azov, thus severing the land bridge that connects Russia with the occupied Crimea and preparing the stage for the liberation of the Peninsula. 

And yet, the Ukrainians failed. 

Miles upon miles of dense Russian minefields, trenches, anti-tank obstacles, heavy artillery fire, drones, and even tactical airstrikes stopped the Ukrainians in their tracks, allowing only for some tactical gains in the south and around Bakhmut, in the Donbas. 

But the extensive Russian defensive efforts—the most comprehensive Europe has seen since the end of World War Two—weren’t the only reason the Ukrainian counteroffensive failed to achieve its goals. In many ways, the Ukrainian field grade level didn’t perform as needed.

Tactically, the Ukrainians fought bravely and with skill, clearing minefields and capturing Russian trench systems.

But without an adequately trained command system to coordinate and take advantage of such tactical success, there is no operational breakthrough. 

Adjusting Fire 

Moving forward, the Ukrainian military should spend more time and resources training not only its ground troops but also the senior leaders who lead them. Combined arms operations—connecting mechanized units, long-range fires, electronic warfare, and air power—are difficult. But it can also be highly rewarding and break an enemy. 

Proficiency in combined arms operations is one of the great advantages of the U.S military and NATO. So, they should be more open in training their Ukrainian counterparts and prepare them for the next round of counteroffensive.

The Ukrainian conflict has a long way to go. However, a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive could shorten the war significantly. Kyiv needs to sit down with its Western partners and plan the conditions to achieve that result and win. 

About the Author

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense and national security journalist specializing in special operations. A Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), he holds a BA from the Johns Hopkins University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His work has been featured in Business InsiderSandboxx, and SOFREP. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org

Image Credit: Shutterstock. 

1,000 Fighters and Counting: How Many F-35s Will Lockheed Martin Build?

The National Interest - Thu, 11/01/2024 - 02:00

Despite setbacks related to ongoing hardware and software upgrades, Lockheed Martin recently completed production on the 1,000th F-35 Lightning II, solidifying its position as the most successful stealth aircraft production line in the history of aviation. In fact, there are more F-35s flying today than all other stealth aircraft throughout history, combined.

While Lockheed Martin announced plans to deliver its 1,000th jet by the end of 2023, delays related to Tech Refresh 3 – a hardware and software upgrade meant to pave the way for even more sweeping improvements to come – prevented the company from achieving that delivery milestone.

However, acclaimed aviation journalist Tyler Rogoway, who runs The Warzone, confirmed its completion with Lockheed Martin via e-mail on Wednesday.

“We continue to produce F-35s at rate and have jets in various stages of the final production process. Once these jets receive the necessary TR-3 hardware and final TR-3 software is available, they will continue through the production process, including parking, until they are delivered,” Lockheed Martin told Rogoway.

Despite a troubled development cycle that led to a series of high-profile production delays and significant cost overruns, the broadly capable stealth fighter that emerged from that acquisition debacle has been lauded by pilots and Defense officials alike as the most technologically advanced tactical aircraft ever to see service.

The jet was designed to prioritize the attack (or air-to-ground) mission set. Yet, its combination of stealth and data-fusing-onboard-computer power has made it a stand-out performer in air-to-air combat as well, racking up a 20:1 kill-to-loss ratio in its first appearance in the Air Force’s Red Flag air combat exercises in 2017.

To date, F-35s have accumulated over 773,000 hours in the air spread out across 469,000 total sorties.

And while the F-35 program certainly still has its critics, a long line of countries have chosen to shell out billions of dollars to secure their own stealth fleets. Nine countries were initially involved in the development of the fighter and today, the list of countries operating or purchasing the F-35 has expanded to 17.

The completion of the 1,000th F-35 places the fighter in elite company, as few fighter designs have ever reached four-figure production runs.

According to Aerotime, the F-35 is the seventh most widely operated fighter in service on the planet today, only trailing behind far older 4th generation jets like the F-15 and Su-27 families of fighters and a few even older 3rd generation platforms like the MiG-21.

But as advanced as the F-35 may be, it is on the cusp of yet another major upgrade that has, once again, produced cost overruns and technical delays.

Tech Refresh 3 (TR-3), now underway, aims to dramatically increase onboard processing power and onboard memory, paving the way for greater sensor fusion and a laundry list of upgrades to come, including new sensors, a variety of new weapons and electronic warfare capabilities, increased power production and more.

The first F-35 to fly with Tech Refresh 3 installed took off on January 6, seemingly paving the way for TR-3 aircraft to start making their way to fleets around the world.

For now, the US Air Force has made it clear that it won’t take delivery on any new fighters until Tech Refresh 3 has been incorporated and is functioning properly, which may take months.

But even with a little pragmatic financial rain on Lockheed Martin’s parade, achieving the milestone of building the 1,000th fighter remains significant for military aviation history.

About the Author

Alex Hollings is a writer, dad, and Marine veteran.

This article was first published by Real Clear Defense.

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