The first key to Starstreak’s capability is its guidance system

Wednesday, March 30th, 2022

The UK is sending Starstreak High-Velocity Missiles (HVMs) to Ukraine:

The first key to Starstreak’s capability is its guidance system. Most MANPADS fire heat-seeking missiles — first, the missile’s infrared seeker head needs to become locked onto the target’s heat signature, before it’s launched and then autonomously homes in on it, in a ‘fire and forget’ mode. Depending on the age of the missile, certain heat-seeking MANPADS will also require some time for the seeker to cool down before it can lock on.

In contrast, the Starstreak uses laser-beam-riding guidance, in which the operator fires the missile as soon as a target is detected in the optically stabilized sight. Line-of-sight is then maintained throughout the engagement process. The aiming unit projects two laser beams onto the target, with sensors on the missile calculating the relative positions until impact. The intensity of these laser beams is low enough that, the manufacturer claims, the targeted aircraft won’t be able to detect them.

Overall, this guidance method is more accurate than traditional laser guidance, in which the target is ‘painted’ with a single beam. The twin-laser approach is more resistant to maneuvering targets that could otherwise break the laser lock. At the same time, unlike infrared-guided MANPADS, the Starstreak cannot be spoofed by flares or other heat sources. Unlike most air defense missiles, it’s effectively immune to countermeasures, including the latest L-370 Vitebsk (exported as the President-S) directional infrared countermeasures (DIRCM) found on many Russian Aerospace Forces helicopters.

Another advantage is that smaller targets can be engaged (as long as the operator can see them through the sight), including those with infrared signatures that might be insufficient for a heat-seeking missile to track.

In another break from MANPADS tradition, it’s not a single missile with a traditional warhead that’s guided onto or very near the target before detonating. Instead, three tungsten darts are released from the missile body, which contains the rocket motor, during the end-game terminal portion of the attack on the target.

The velocity of these darts, also known as ‘hittiles,’ is such that the Starstreak can destroy not only targets in the air [but] also heavily armored targets on the ground if the need arises. The darts have small control surfaces at the front to ensure they are steered into the target, via the projected laser matrix. They fly in ‘formation’ with a separation of around 5 feet.

The speed with which the missile itself then closes in on the target — up to 2,000 mph — gives it little chance of escape within a very brief engagement window, or ‘unmasking time.’

[...]

Once they have penetrated the target, the darts also explode, each one carrying a fragmentation warhead.

Posted in Technology, War, Weapons | 6 Comments »

It does not amount to “formalized” training

Tuesday, March 29th, 2022

President Joe Biden said on Monday that US troops stationed in Poland have been “helping train the Ukrainian troops” in that country — but this has been clarified:

The sources told CNN that while US troops are indeed providing some instruction to the Ukrainians at a military base in Poland, it does not amount to “formalized” training.

Rather, the coaching is more tactical and in-the-moment, the sources explained. That includes showing the Ukrainian soldiers picking up the weapons shipments in Poland how to use some of that equipment, like the Javelin anti-tank missiles that the West has been sending in large numbers. Poland has become the central transit point of arms transfers into Ukraine.

The US has allocated $1 billion in security assistance to Ukraine in the last month alone, and intends to provide Ukraine’s armed forces with more than 9,000 shoulder-fired anti-tank weapons, including Javelins; nearly 7,000 small arms including machine guns and grenade launchers; 20 million rounds of ammunition; and 100 armed drones.

“These are direct transfers of equipment from our Department of Defense to the Ukrainian military to help them as they fight against this invasion,” Biden said earlier this month. “We’re going to continue to do more in the days and weeks ahead.”

NATO Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Tod D. Wolters told US lawmakers on Tuesday that the US had been providing “advice and assistance with respect to materiel” going into Ukraine, but that the US forces are not “in the process of currently training military forces from Ukraine in Poland.”

“There are liaisons that are there that are being given advice, and that is different than what I think you are referring to with respect to training,” Wolters told Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas when asked about the training.

Wolters said separately during the hearing that “as you well know we’ve made dramatic improvements in our information sharing and intelligence sharing, and as [the Ukrainians] continue to pursue their campaign, our advice and our assistance with respect to material will be very, very important,” Wolters said.

Posted in Policy, War | 2 Comments »

Some of the technologies behind China’s Assassin’s Mace weapons were indigenously developed

Tuesday, March 29th, 2022

Kill Chain by Christian BroseAfter the Gulf War, Christian Brose explains (in The Kill Chain), the Russians weren’t the only ones to notice the US military’s success:

Upon visiting Baghdad, Chinese military officials learned that Saddam Hussein had the same aging Soviet air defenses and other weapons that China did, and in some cases, Iraq’s were better.

[…]

What unnerved the Chinese Communist Party was not just the stealth and precision of US forces but also their ability to achieve victory without completely annihilating the Iraqi military.

[…]

In 1996, as tensions between China and Taiwan flared, the United States sailed an aircraft carrier battle group into the Taiwan Strait, one hundred miles from China’s mainland, and the Chinese military struggled to locate its exact position. Three years later, China watched again as the same US way of war that had triumphed in Iraq destroyed Serbia’s ability to fight and forced Milosevic to capitulate. This time, however, it was personal, because a US airstrike had destroyed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

[…]

Under what it called its 995 Plan (named for the Belgrade embassy attack in May 1999), China accelerated work to build a different kind of military. It continued to spend money on traditional military systems, such as ships and tanks, but its priority was to develop what it called “Assassin’s Mace” weapons. The name refers to special weapons that were used in Chinese history to defeat more powerful adversaries.

[…]

In the event of a war in Asia, the US military would build up its iron mountains in these forward bases, much as it had used similar bases to wage the wars in Iraq and the Balkans, and this would enable US forces to fight how, when, and where they wished. China knew that Washington assumed all of this, and it built larger and larger quantities of increasingly capable missiles, primarily medium-range and long-range ballistic missiles, to wipe out America’s critical warfighting infrastructure in Asia.

[…]

As a result, China developed early-warning and long-range radars to spot approaching US aircraft from as far away as possible. It also built dense and formidable networks of integrated air and missile defense systems that would aim to shoot down US planes from greater distances and high-powered jammers that would seek to destroy their ability to communicate.

[…]

The fact that aircraft carriers could move — so first had to be located — made them much tougher targets than land bases. But China knew that most US carriers were not based in Asia and would need to sail into the region from elsewhere in the event of conflict.

[…]

So, China set about building over-the-horizon radars, long-range reconnaissance satellites and aircraft, and other means of hunting America’s floating airfields as they made their long journey across the Pacific Ocean.

[…]

The DF-21, the world’s first ever anti-ship ballistic missile, was designed to do just that — fly out more than one thousand miles, slam into a carrier, and cripple its ability to fight, if not sink it altogether.

[…]

As Washington lurched from one costly military acquisition debacle to another, Beijing fielded an even more capable carrier killer missile, the DF-26, which may be able to fly twice as far as the DF-21, possibly farther, carry a larger warhead, and strike more precisely. It also fielded quiet diesel submarines and anti-ship cruise missiles that were harder to detect and defeat because they could fly low and maneuver unpredictably.

[…]

An additional set of Assassin’s Mace weapons focused on doing to the US military what it had done to Iraq in 1991: destroying the underlying systems that sustained the ability to wage war. In America’s case, this was its communications and intelligence satellites, especially its Global Positioning System (GPS), which enabled US weapons to find their targets. It was the information networks that moved targeting data from sensors to shooters. And it was the logistics enterprise that allowed US forces to flow into theaters of operations and sustained forces in combat with food, fuel, and supplies.

[…]

This was all part of a broader warfighting doctrine that Chinese military officials ultimately called “systems destruction warfare.”

[…]

Some of the technologies behind China’s Assassin’s Mace weapons were indigenously developed, but many fell into Chinese hands as the result of a long-term and large-scale campaign of state-sponsored theft.

[…]

It was often noted, for example, that China’s CH-4B unmanned aircraft was a spitting image of the US Predator drone, and that its J-20 fifth-generation fighter jet looked strikingly similar to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Indeed, some joked in Washington that all of the multi-billion-dollar acquisition disasters that plagued the US military were actually part of an ingenious plot to sabotage China when it tried to copy them.

[…]

By 2012, General Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency and commander of US Cyber Command, estimated that the United States was losing a quarter of $1 trillion every year to cyber-enabled industrial espionage, much of it by China. He called it “the greatest transfer of wealth in history.”

Why assassin’s mace?

A club-type weapon sounds like a rather unsuitable weapon for an assassin. The actual Chinese term is Sha Shou Jian (literally “killing hand club”), which refers to a pair of short wooden or metal rods used as a martial arts weapon. “Jian” normally denotes a long Chinese swordbut Sha Shou Jian are blunt and heavy. They could be concealed in the long sleeves of court robes and used to make surprise attacks — hence the association with assassins.

And although some Western commentators like the *New Atlantis *claim that the meaning of the assassin’s mace “remains elusive, ” it’s no mystery to Mandarin speakers. Sha Shou Jian a popular expression used by sports commentators, businessmen and even in romantic advice columns. Alastair Johnston of Harvard University criticizes the way Washington pundits want to make the Assassin’s Mace “mysterious and exotic”: it’s simply the decisive, winning quality. In sports, the Assassin’s Mace may be the key goal-scorer; in business, it’s any quality that puts you ahead of the competition; in love, it might be the subtle smile that wins over the object of your affections. Johnston suggests that a fairly idiomatic translation would be “silver bullet” and that the concept behind it is less fiendishly oriental than is often supposed.

[…]

The Pentagon defines the Maces as technologies that might afford an inferior military an advantage in a conflict with a superior power. In this view, an Assassin’s Mace is anything which provides a cheap means of countering an expensive weapon. Other examples might include Chinese anti-satellite weapons, which might instantly knock out U.S. space assets, or a conventional ballistic missile, designed to take out a supercarrier and all its aircraft in one hit. It’s an interesting contrast to the perspective of the American arms industry, which can end up spending vast amounts countering low-tech, low-cost threats like mines and IEDs.

Posted in Policy, Technology, War, Weapons | 4 Comments »

The battlefield would now be everywhere

Sunday, March 27th, 2022

Kill Chain by Christian BroseRussia’s exploits from a few years ago, Christian Brose explains (in The Kill Chain), demonstrated a type of modern political warfare that became known as the “Gerasimov doctrine”:

“The very ‘rules of war’ have changed,” Gerasimov wrote. “The role of non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness.”

Put another way, the reconnaissance-strike complex now included the ability to surveil the political and social fault lines in countries and strike directly at the heart of them through “military means of a concealed character.” This included misinformation campaigns, political subversion, assassination, cyberattacks, and “active measures” using social media to tear at the fabric of diverse and democratic societies. The battlefield would now be everywhere.

Posted in Policy, War | 3 Comments »

All of this military modernization had one explicit purpose

Friday, March 25th, 2022

Kill Chain by Christian BroseWhat each president was slow to learn, Christian Brose suggests (in The Kill Chain), was that Russia was more interested in restoring the great-power status it lost in 1991 than in becoming the partner the United States hoped it would be:

This was especially true once Vladimir Putin became president on New Year’s Eve 1999.

[...]

A ruler who referred to the demise of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century” set about restoring what he believed was Russia’s rightful place in the global balance of military power.

[...]

So, as the Obama administration was going out of its way to “reset” US relations with Russia, Putin was pouring money into the construction of an arsenal of technologically sophisticated weapons: long-range missiles and rockets, highly capable special operations forces, advanced air defenses, electronic warfare, cyber weapons, lasers to blind satellites, missiles to shoot them down, and tactical nuclear weapons.

[...]

All of this military modernization had one explicit purpose: to render the United States incapable of projecting military power into Europe and defending its NATO allies, especially the many parts of Europe that Putin still believed should be part of a greater Russia.

Posted in Policy, War | 3 Comments »

The Little Green Men could jam Ukrainian drones

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2022

Kill Chain by Christian BroseThe Russian military of 2014, which Christian Brose describes in The Kill Chain, seemed disturbingly competent:

This was not a Russian military that most in Washington recognized. It had highly capable weapons, such as electronic warfare systems, communications jammers, air defenses, and long-range precision rocket artillery, much of which was better than anything the US military had.

[…]

The Little Green Men could jam Ukrainian drones, causing them to fall out of the sky. They could also jam the fuses on Ukrainian warheads so they never exploded when they hit their targets, but instead landed on the ground with an inert thud. The Ukrainians talked about how the Little Green Men could detect any signal they emitted and use it to target them. Minutes after talking on the radio, their positions were wiped out by barrages of rocket artillery. Their armored vehicles were identified by unmanned spotter drones and immediately hit with special munitions that came down right on top of them, where the armor was weakest, killing everyone inside.

[…]

The Ukrainians tried to dig themselves into bunkers and trenches, but the Little Green Men hit them with thermobaric warheads that sucked all of the oxygen out of those closed spaces, turning it into fuel that ignited everything and everyone inside. Entire columns of Ukrainian troops were annihilated by cluster munitions.

[…]

One day during the conflict, the man’s mother received a call from someone claiming to be the Ukrainian authorities, who informed her that her son had been badly wounded in action in eastern Ukraine. She immediately did what any mother would do: she called her son’s mobile phone. Little did she know that the call she had received was from Russian operatives who had gotten a hold of her son’s cell phone number but knew that he rarely used the phone for operational security reasons. This Ukrainian commander, being a good son, quickly called his mother back, which enabled the Little Green Men to geolocate his position. Seconds later, while still on the phone, he was killed in a barrage of precision rocket artillery.

[…]

What emerged in Ukraine in 2014 was more than just Little Green Men; it was a battle network of sensors and shooters that closed the kill chain with remarkable speed and lethality. It was a Russian reconnaissance-strike complex.

Posted in Technology, War, Weapons | 1 Comment »

They were simply new versions of old things

Monday, March 21st, 2022

Kill Chain by Christian BroseMany of the high-tech weapons systems that Rumsfeld and others billed as “transformational” were not actually transformational, Christian Brose explains (in The Kill Chain) — at least not in the way that Andrew Marshall and like-minded thinkers intended, when they proposed a “revolution in military affairs” years earlier:

These systems did not represent better, faster ways to close the kill chain. They were simply new versions of old things.

[…]

The bigger issue is that most of these allegedly information age military systems struggle to share information and communicate directly with one another to a degree that would shock most Americans. For example, the F-22 and F-35A fighter jets cannot directly share basic airborne positioning and targeting data despite the fact that they are both Air Force programs and built by the same company.

[…]

If one aircraft identifies a target, the only way it can transmit that data to the other is how it was done in the last century: by a person speaking on a radio.

[…]

The ability of these things to share information is often an afterthought. In fact, the incentives usually cut the other way: Defense companies have profited more by building closed systems of proprietary technologies that make the military more dependent on a given company to maintain and upgrade those platforms for the decades they are in service, which is where companies make their real money. This behavior stems not from malice but a rational pursuit of self-interest in a platform-centered defense market.

[…]

The connections between our military systems tend to be highly rigid, excessively manual, rather brittle, and thus slow. We have largely focused on connecting specific military systems together to generate understanding, facilitate decisions, and take actions against specific kinds of targets. But those kill chains do not easily adapt to threats that are different from those they were specifically built to address. They may be highly effective against preplanned objectives that do not change much, such as striking stationary targets in the opening days of a conflict. But our kill chains struggle to confront dynamic threats, such as moving targets, or multiple dilemmas at once.

Posted in Policy, Technology, War | No Comments »

At least some of the fierce resistance by Ukrainian forces has its roots in a now shuttered covert CIA training program

Saturday, March 19th, 2022

As the battle lines hardened in Donbas, back in 2014, CIA paramilitaries made their first secret trips to the frontlines:

Ukrainian snipers had a problem: Russian forces in eastern Ukraine were trying to blind them.

As the Ukrainians were looking through their scopes in order to find their targets, the Russians had begun pinpointing their location using the glare of the glass, and were shooting high-energy lasers into them, damaging the snipers’ eyesight.

[…]

CIA paramilitaries soon concluded that, in Russia and its proxies, the agency was facing an adversary whose capabilities far outmatched the Islamist groups that CIA had been battling in the post-9/11 wars. “We learned a lot real quick,” says a former senior intelligence official — including about the Russians’ laser-blinding techniques. “That s*** wouldn’t happen with the Taliban.”

[…]

At least some of the fierce resistance by Ukrainian forces has its roots in a now shuttered covert CIA training program run from Ukraine’s eastern frontlines, former intelligence officials tell Yahoo News. The initiative was described to Yahoo News by over half a dozen former officials, all of whom requested anonymity to speak freely about sensitive intelligence matters.

The program was run under previously existing authorities for the CIA and did not require a new legal determination for the agency, known as a covert action finding, according to a former national security official.

As part of the Ukraine-based training program, CIA paramilitaries taught their Ukrainian counterparts sniper techniques; how to operate U.S.-supplied Javelin anti-tank missiles and other equipment; how to evade digital tracking the Russians used to pinpoint the location of Ukrainian troops, which had left them vulnerable to attacks by artillery; how to use covert communications tools; and how to remain undetected in the war zone while also drawing out Russian and insurgent forces from their positions, among other skills, according to former officials.

After Russia’s 2014 incursion, the U.S. military also helped run a long-standing, publicly acknowledged training program for Ukrainian troops in the country’s western region, far from the frontlines. That program also included instruction in how to use Javelin anti-tank missiles and sniper training.

Yahoo News reported in January on the CIA’s secret U.S.-based training initiative for Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel. That program, which began in 2015, also included instruction in firearms, camouflage techniques and covert communications. Yahoo News’ prior report also revealed that CIA paramilitaries had traveled to eastern Ukraine to assist forces loyal to Kyiv in their fight against Russia and its separatist allies.

Posted in Policy, War | 3 Comments »

They would come under immediate attack once they began their multiweek mobilization across the planet

Saturday, March 19th, 2022

Kill Chain by Christian BroseChristian Brose opens The Kill Chain with the alarming fact that the US has consistently lost against China in war games:

Many of the US ships, submarines, fighter jets, bomber aircraft, additional munitions, and other systems that are needed to fight would not be near the war when it started but would be thousands of miles away in the United States. They would come under immediate attack once they began their multiweek mobilization across the planet.

Cyberattacks would grind down the logistical movement of US forces into combat. The defenseless cargo ships and aircraft that would ferry much of that force across the Pacific would be attacked every step of the way. Satellites on which US forces depend for intelligence, communications, and global positioning would be blinded by lasers, shut down by high-energy jammers, or shot out of orbit altogether by antisatellite missiles. The command and control networks that manage the flow of critical information to US forces in combat would be broken apart and shattered by electronic attacks, cyberattacks, and missiles. Many US forces would be rendered deaf, dumb, and blind.

While these attacks were under way, America’s forward bases in places like Japan and Guam would be inundated with waves of precise ballistic and cruise missiles. The few defenses those bases have would quickly be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of weapons coming at them, with many leaking through.

[…]

Those bases would have no defense against China’s hypersonic weapons, which can maneuver unpredictably, fly at five times the speed of sound, and strike their targets within minutes of being launched. As all of these missiles slammed into US bases, they would destroy fighter jets and other aircraft on the ground before US pilots could even get them airborne.

[…]

Older, non-stealthy fighter jets, such as F-15s and F-16s, would not play an offensive role, because they could not survive against China’s advanced fighters and surface-to-air missile systems.

[…]

The limited numbers of stealthy, fifth-generation fighter jets that could be brought to bear, such as F-22s and F-35s, can fly only several hundred miles on a single tank of fuel, so they would depend heavily on aerial refueling tankers to be able to reach their targets. But because those tankers are neither stealthy nor equipped with any self-defense capabilities, they would be shot down in large numbers.

[…]

Once the war started, US aircraft carriers in the region would immediately turn east and sail away from China, intent on getting more than a thousand miles away from the opponent’s long-range anti-ship missiles. But from that far away, none of the aircraft on the flight deck would be capable of reaching their targets without aerial refueling, so the Navy would find itself on the horns of the same dilemma the Air Force faced.

[…]

All the while, Chinese satellites and radars would be hunting for those aircraft carriers as well as additional carriers meant to provide reinforcement that would begin their long journey across the Pacific Ocean from wherever they were in the continental United States.

[…]

The Marine Corps would struggle even more than the Navy but for the same reasons. Billions of dollars’ worth of amphibious assault capability, built to deliver US troops onto enemy beaches as they had done for the D-Day landings in 1944 or the forced entry at Inchon at the start of the Korean War, would play no such role.

Posted in War | 12 Comments »

Loitering munitions are odd weapons that can be considered either explosive drones or flying artillery shells

Friday, March 18th, 2022

The U.S. has announced that it will supply Ukraine with 100 Switchblade kamikaze drones:

Loitering munitions are odd weapons that can be considered either explosive drones or flying artillery shells, depending on how you define them. The AeroVironment Switchblade 300 is small enough to be carried in the backpack of a soldier or guerrilla. Once Switchblade is fired from its launch tube, wings pop out and a propeller spins to carry the drone aloft. It almost sounds like a hobbyist’s flying machine or a child’s toy, but Switchblade is quite lethal.

Switchblade orbits a target area, looking down with its day and night cameras and relaying the imagery back to the operator, who controls the drone with a handheld controller. Once a suitable target is spotted, the operator commands the drone to dive on the target and explode (hence the “kamikaze” nickname).

To be clear, the range of the Switchblade 300 model isn’t great: 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) and an endurance of 15 minutes, and a cruise speed of 63 miles per hour. The warhead isn’t much more powerful than a grenade.

But so what? Just 2 feet long and weighing just 5.5 pounds, it can be carried as a disposable munition just like the M72 Light Antitank Weapon (which also weighs 5.5 pounds).

[…]

For urban warfare, Switchblade could be particularly useful: a weapon that could be flown into a window, or that can fly over intervening buildings and hit a Russian patrol on the other side of the street. For hit-and-run insurgent warfare, the Switchblade 300 is light enough that dismounted troops — and civilian fighters — could get within a few miles of a road that a Russian supply convoy is traveling down. A Switchblade is small enough that the convoy probably wouldn’t see it coming, further demoralizing an already demoralized Russian army.

Posted in War, Weapons | 3 Comments »

The Marines as currently organized and equipped are about as relevant as the Army’s horse cavalry in the 1930s

Friday, March 18th, 2022

The Marines as currently organized and equipped are about as relevant as the Army’s horse cavalry in the 1930s, Douglas A. Macgregor says — speaking in 2012 — and the Marines are not alone:

They have company in the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps.

[…]

Today, enemy forces will mine approaches from the sea, and rely on stand-off attack to drive surface fleets away from coastlines. They’ll employ their ground forces, particularly mobile armored forces, inland, away from the coast. These mobile reserves will attack within the range of the defending forces’ own artillery and airpower to destroy elements that attempt to come ashore whether over the beach or through ports.

Most of today’s Marine force consists of airmobile light infantry. This Marine force is designed for use in the developing world against incapable opponents from Haiti to Fiji, but not much else.

The use of Marines to assault Iraq’s southern coast during Desert Storm was dismissed out of hand as too dangerous, particularly when Navy surface combatants struck sea mines in the Persian Gulf. Subsequently, in 1991 Marines were used ashore to augment the Army where Marines followed an Army armor brigade from Fort Hood, Texas, all the way to Kuwait City.

The point is simple.

The capability to come ashore where the enemy is not present, then, move quickly with sustainable combat power great distances over land to operational objectives in the interior, is essential. The Marines cannot do it in any strategic setting where the opponent is capable (neither can the XVIII Airborne Corps!).

The Marines cannot confront or defeat armored forces or heavy weapons in the hands of capable opponents. Nor can the Marines hold any contested battle space for more than a very short amount of time, after which the Marine raid or short stay ashore is completed.

Adding vertical-and/or-short-takeoff-landing (V/STOL) aircraft like the F-35B, to compensate for the lack of staying power and mobility on the ground is not an answer, particularly given the severe limitations of VSTOL aircraft, and the proliferation of tactical and operational air defense technology in places that count.

The real question is how much Marine Corps do Americans need? The answer is not the 200,000 Marines we have today.

Many of the same observations apply to the Army’s vaunted XVIII Airborne Corps. The Army’s airmobile infantry in the 101st have been used sparingly for similar reasons. Airmobile forces were used in 1991, but most of its value resided in its attack-helicopter force, not in its air-mobile infantry.

Proposals to use Army airborne forces to seize Tallil air field in An Nassiryah during Desert Storm were dismissed out of hand given the threat of Iraqi air defenses. A similar assault planned for Haiti was cancelled in 1994, and the large-scale use of airborne forces in Iraq and Afghanistan was also ruled out in 2001 and, again, in 2003.

There are several reasons for this:

  • First, like the Marines ashore, Army airmobile and airborne forces are “soft targets,” extremely vulnerable to long-range air and missile attack, as well as heavy weapons in the form of self-propelled artillery, mortars and auto-cannon.
  • Second, the Army’s airmobile division, the 101st, is extremely slow to deploy. Moving it requires as much cubic space as an entire armored/mechanized division. Its performance in Iraq in March-April 2003 was poor. Its alleged combat potential was never put to the test for the reasons already cited.
  • Third, the rotary-wing aircraft in the Army are very maintenance-intensive with often-poor readiness rates. The airmobile force in the 101st is also a major consumer of fuel and requires enormous support, as well as expensive contractor help. Their rotary-wing aircraft are also susceptible to detection and vulnerable to widely-dispersed small arms and MANPADS, potentially resulting in substantial casualties and equipment losses even before the airmobile force is ready to engage the enemy on the ground.

None of these attributes make the force attractive for employment against any enemy with a modicum of capability in its armed forces.

Posted in War | 6 Comments »

On-duty police fatally shoot about 1,000 people every year

Thursday, March 17th, 2022

When Ferguson burst into flames, Robert VerBruggen notes, we knew very little about the true number of people killed by police, unarmed or otherwise:

In a survey conducted by Manhattan Institute colleague Eric Kaufmann, for example, eight in 10 African-Americans and about half of white Biden voters said that they thought that young black men were more likely to be shot to death by police than to die in a car accident — one of the largest mortality risks to the young and healthy. Another survey, by Skeptic magazine, showed that more than a third of liberal and very liberal respondents thought that the number of unarmed blacks killed by police each year was “about 1,000” or more. About a fifth of those calling themselves “very conservative” thought the same thing. Yet another survey, from a trio of academics, found that about four in 10 African-Americans reported being “very afraid” of being killed by the police, which was roughly twice the share of black respondents who reported being “very afraid” of being murdered by criminals, as well as about four times the share of whites who reported being “very afraid” of being killed by the police.

[…]

So what do the basic numbers and five years of research reveal? These are the major findings detailed in the following pages:

On-duty police fatally shoot about 1,000 people every year. This number and its racial breakdown have remained remarkably steady since 2015. The overall Post tally has ranged from a low of 958 in 2016, to a “record” of 1,055 in 2021 (reported as this paper went to press), with any pattern difficult to distinguish from random chance.

Approximately a quarter of those killed are black. This is roughly double the black share of the overall population, but it is in line with — and sometimes below — many other “bench-marks” that one might use for comparison, such as the racial breakdowns of arrests, murders, and violent-crime offenders as reported by victims in surveys.

Blacks are an even higher percentage of unarmed civilians shot and killed by police (34%), which is a potential sign of bias. However, not all shootings of unarmed civilians are unjustified, and it is difficult to objectively classify these cases in a more granular fashion. And contrary to the popular perceptions outlined above, confirmed fatal police shootings of unarmed African-Americans number about 22 per year.

More rigorous research into the question of whether police killings reflect racial bias is in its infancy, and it has been subject to intense debates over the appropriate methods. But existing studies are divided on the bias question. Many papers fail to find bias in lethal force, though one of the most careful studies in the literature — of an unnamed city with a high murder rate — does find that white cops discharge their guns several times as often as black cops when sent to 911 calls in heavily black neighborhoods.

Posted in Crime, Policy | 4 Comments »

US Air Force backs Valkyrie’s high-speed, amphibious jet-powered eVTOL

Sunday, March 13th, 2022

Reno-based Valkyrie Systems Aerospace has received a research grant from the US Air Force to develop its HoverJet Guardian, which combines electric VTOL and high-speed jet cruise with amphibious and hovercraft capabilities:

The VTOL system appears to use a quadcopter layout, with four props (or perhaps eight mounted coaxially) hiding in holes in its fat wings. These get it off the ground in relatively civilized fashion, but then a pair of Pratt & Whitney 545c turbofan engines take over, adding a combined 8,200 pounds of horizontal thrust to the mix.

The result, claims Valkyrie, is a cruise speed of 340 mph (547 km/h), a transonic top sprint speed of 700 mph (1,127 km/h), and a whopping 15 hours of endurance at altitudes up to 40,000 feet (12,192 m).

This is no small bird. Measuring 24 x 30 x 6 ft (7.3 x 9.1 x 1.8 m), it’ll weigh 4,200 lb (1,905 kg) empty. Add fuel, a pilot and/or up to 2,000 lb (907 kg) of cargo, and that little VTOL system will have to lift the Guardian at a maximum takeoff weight of 12,000 lb (5,443 kg).

That’s considerably heavier, say, than the Joby S4, which is said to be around 8,820 lb (4,000 kg), and it uses fewer, smaller propellers. So those props are going to have to work hard. On the other hand, since it’ll run primarily on jet fuel, energy storage won’t be an issue at all, and the electric systems can be tuned for high power rather than efficiency.

High-speed VTOL is not all these things bring to the table, either. The Guardian, and its smaller brother, the Eagle UAV, are apparently capable of landing on water, and offering “three modes of operation: aircraft, hovercraft and amphibious.”

Posted in Technology, War, Weapons | 6 Comments »

If this wargame had been played at the Pentagon or the White House in the weeks leading up to the war, no strategist or policymaker would be shocked by any event so far seen in the war

Thursday, March 10th, 2022

In the two weeks prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Marine Corps University ran a four-day wargame to simulate the first several days of just such an invasion:

The hope is that students will develop insights from these wargames that help them better understand joint warfighting. In the case of this particular wargame, its near concurrent use with the actual start of the war presents an opportunity to make constructive comparisons and contrasts. Actual events also highlight the importance of the human domain and how difficult it is to effectively model or assess prior to conflict. While the game does make allowance for aspects of the human domain, it is hard to factor in things like the courageous leadership being demonstrated by Zelenskyy and its impact on the will of the fighting forces and the Ukrainian people.

One must be very careful when using a wargame for predictive purposes. But, on the other hand, no one involved in this wargame has been much surprised by anything unfolding on the ground. Almost all of it took place within the game or was discussed at length among the players. This is in contrast with nearly every expert and pundit on the airwaves, who are expressing astonishment at how this conflict is unfolding. If this wargame had been played at the Pentagon or the White House in the weeks leading up to the war, no strategist or policymaker would be shocked by any event so far seen in the war.

Posted in Games, War | 10 Comments »

With the madness of the Cold War behind us, no one would again risk taking the world to the brink

Wednesday, March 9th, 2022

The problem with the idea of a no-fly zone is its enforcement:

Russian anti-aircraft batteries in Belarus and Russia easily cover all of Ukraine’s territory, and would shoot down allied planes at will. In order for a no-fly zone to be enforced, therefore, we would have to be ready to bomb military installations outside of Ukraine, and indeed on Russian soil. While acknowledging these dangers, Breedlove himself thinks that we should not take the threat of a no-fly zone off the table, presumably for strategic ambiguity reasons. As a bluff never carried through, it has some merits: the more Russia wonders about our final intentions, the better. But it’s worth carefully thinking through the consequences of actually taking the decision.

Once the United States starts losing planes over Ukraine, for example, the domestic pressure to get revenge will become orders of magnitude greater than it already is. Demands for punitive actions against Russian ground forces will become shriller, with calls to bomb troops in Ukraine as well as bases in Belarus or Russia. Besides a thirst for revenge, righteous indignation would also increase. After all, most of the horrors we are witnessing are the result of Russian artillery pounding an overmatched Ukrainian resistance and targeting helpless civilians in cities. Air power has its limits, however. Properly punishing Russian forces will at some point require deploying ground troops of our own. A no-fly zone could transform into a more ambitious land war for securing Ukrainian territory in no time, a land war that itself spills over into Belarus and Russia.

How bad could that be, though? Doesn’t the apparent sorry state of the Russian army mean that NATO would have little trouble in stopping Moscow’s murderous campaign fairly quickly?

[…]

While the United States was preoccupied fighting low-grade colonial wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan and building up its force posture to most effectively kill aggrieved shepherds with machine guns riding around in Toyota LandCruisers, Russia (and China) have been upgrading their tactical nuclear arsenal in preparation for exactly the kind of confrontation we see now in Ukraine.

Tactical nuclear weapons should be distinguished from strategic nuclear weapons. The former are of much lower yield and destructive power than the latter, and are designed to obliterate a tank battalion or a base rather than an entire city. Indeed, they were first developed by the United States in the Cold War in order to deter superior Soviet land forces from contemplating an invasion of a comparatively overmatched NATO army on the European continent. The idea was that if the Soviets rolled tanks into the Fulda Gap, for example, NATO could destroy them without triggering the ultimate escalation to Mutually Assured Destruction — a nuclear exchange targeting cities on both sides that would likely end human civilization as we know it.

The military strategist Elbridge Colby was among those warning in 2018 that American complacency on the question of tactical nukes was leading us to disaster. Liberals and doves were certain that with nuclear war now “unthinkable,” there was no point in investing in weapons that would skirt the threshold of total annihilation. It was part a failure of imagination, and part of a broader belief in rationalist “progress” — with the madness of the Cold War behind us, no one would again risk taking the world to the brink. A new day had dawned on the world with the fall of the Soviet Union. There was no going back to darkness.

Sadly, planners in Moscow were not as idealistic, or complacent. Willick cites a Congressional Research Service report, saying that “the United States has only 230 [tactical nuclear weapons], ‘with around 100 deployed with aircraft in Europe.’ Russia has up to 2,000.” Talmadge nails down the predicament we find ourselves in: “The problem is that precisely because all-out nuclear war would be so costly for both the U.S. and Russia, Mr. Putin likely believes it won’t happen. As a result, he may feel relatively safe engaging in conventional aggression or even limited nuclear use below that threshold — demonstration strikes, for example, or attacks on military targets — without much risk of a Western response.”

Posted in Policy, War | 18 Comments »

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