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The F-35 is already part of the USMC combat force. It will join the USAF later this year. And next year the F-35C will come to the carrier air wing.
In contrast to the constant barrage of chants from the Greek Chorus of program critics, the program is rapidly maturing.
The F-35 has become tactically operational in the USMC while the aircraft is undergoing developmental testing by the Pax River and Edwards AFB with an F-35 Integrated Test Force (ITF) for the USAF and USN . What is not widely understood is that the ITF is managing the ongoing developmental testing for the life of the program. After all, as the head engineer of the Pax River ITF put it: “The F-18 is still undergoing developmental testing.”
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With the scope, complexity and concurrent global reach of the F-35 program, a new approach to testing was set in motion.
As Andrew Mack, the F-35 ITF chief test engineer put it:
When the F-35B Block 2B became cleared for IOC, (VMFA-121) there were many stories about what it cannot do; that really is not the point.
The plane will evolve its capabilities over time based on spiral development.
The point is that is a very capable combat jet at the block it has achieved already.
And the impact is immediate. —stealth from the sea is brand new for the Marine Corps and Navy.
In other words, the program is one of “spiral development” in which combat F-35 Type/Model/Series (T/M/S) airplanes emerge throughout the process to operate as effective combat assets, even while the developmental testing for all three types of F-35s continue.
Put bluntly, the F-35B in the hands of the Marines is a fully “up” combat aircraft (both airframe, sensors and weapon systems) addition to the USMC Air/Ground team.
All Squadron Pilots in Marines, USAF and Navy, and in partner Air Forces will be backed up by the best test community in the world at Edwards and Pax.
This partnership forged for decades will continue a dynamic synergistic combat way for the entire life of the F-35 Global Enterprise.
As the United States faces a new Administration and with the resurgent Russians reshaping their place in the world, it will be crucial to shape a real policy towards deterrence of Russia.
We have gone way beyond the reset button; and face a significant deterioration not only in our relationship with the Russians, but in dealing with the Russian redesign of Middle Eastern and European security.
Put bluntly, coming to terms with Putin, and putting him in his place is a key requirement going forward.
When President Reagan came to office after the Carter Administration, the President felt that a significant shift in how to deal with Russia was required.
He started by being very clear that is was about rebuilding American power, engaging effectively in information war with the Russians and reworking relationships with key allies to ensure that Russian interests would not split the NATO Alliance and expand Russian power at the expense of the democracies.
President Reagan at Berlin Wall calling for its removal. June 12, 1987.
He also set in motion what would become the eventual reunification of Germany by challenging the values of the Russian reform government, and challenged Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”
There was no assumption of moral equivalence between Russian Communism and Western democracy.
He also did not have a vast National Security Council bureaucracy to confuse policy making. Senior policy makers – certainly after the shake out of the first two years – were in place who had the clear support of the President.
Over the course of his Administration a strategy was put in place to reshape the Western relationship with Russia and to create precisely the environment against which Putin has shaped his revenge.
In a piece which I wrote for the French team which addressed the question of the causes of the collapse of the Soviet Empire, I was asked to write a piece on the military factor in that collapse. In that piece, I highlighted that the Russians were faced with a resurgent U.S. military under Reagan but one which was shaping a new approach to concepts of operations, air-land battle, and that the shift being shaped and populated with new technology, simply made their plans for threatening Western Europe with a World War II style of invasion, simply not credible.
When the Soviet military leadership looked at ways to respond, the response was not one, which the Russians could afford, nor execute easily. [ref]”Le Facteur Militaire dans l’effondrement de l’Union Sovietique: Les Limites du Systeme Adaptation, in Anne de Tinguy, editor, L’Effondrement de L’Empire Sovietique, Bruxelles: Etablissements Emile Bruylant, 1998. [/ref]
But the strategy, which emerged under Reagan, was complex combination of military modernization and a much broader political strategy.
Internet image of photograph of Ronald Reagan on a trip to russia. 1st left (stripe top) is believed to be Vladimir Putin. Source: pete souza / radio free europe
Contemporary analysts rarely recognize this combination, but such a combination is needed now as well to shape a way ahead to deal with Putin. And while the cry has gone out to find Russian scholars to understand Putin and his challenge, a little history is in order, especially because this is EXACTLY the history to which Putin, who has shaped by that history, is responding.
There were several elements to the effort.
First, the Administration sought to highlight a weapons program cancelled under the previous Administration to refund to make a strategic point – the U.S. was going to strengthen the military.
The weapon chosen was the B-1 bomber, and in the first term, the program was brought back and served as a symbol of a new way ahead.
Second, the Soviet military buildup was highlighted as a direct threat against the United States and its allies and information war was initiated to focus directly on the Soviet threat.
Third, new systems were funded and brought into existence along with shaping a new deterrent strategy in Europe.
Fourth, the Euro-Missile crisis was joined, in which the Russians clearly sought to split the NATO Alliance along the lines of nuclear deterrence by introducing new missiles explicitly targeting Europe but not the United States.
I spent much time in the early 1980s visiting Western Europe and engaging in debates in the West about the Euro-missile crisis and the importance of a clear response in terms of weapons and doctrine to the Russian challenge. And I wrote several books on the same as well.
Fifth, there was reconciliation between Reagan and President Mitterrand of France, an odd couple of there ever was one.
But the pair worked together to shape a coherent response to the Russians. We published an essay in French and English, which addressed how the Russians would attack France in case of war.
We leveraged some key Russian General Staff work which made it very clear to the President of the Republic, that the Russians were going to go after the French nuclear deterrent at the outset of any war. Rather than providing a sanctuary, French nuclear weapons made France a key priority target of any military campaign against Europe.
President Mitterrand personally responded to our work with a clear recognition of what this meant for France and was an input to his rethink and in 1983 made a famous speech in the German parliament in which he called for support to the Reagan missile deployment plan in Europe.
Less known was the Reagan-Mitterrand efforts in what would become known later as the Farwell Affair. Here Mitterrand informed Reagan of the extensive Russian technological espionage program in the West, whereby the Russians were able to steal technology in the United States with the collusion of a number of U.S. political, intelligence and industrial officials.
Mitterrand decided to share with President Reagan unique intelligence information, which the French had gathered which should how the Soviets were stealing the US and the West blind on defense industrial information.
The information showed significant Soviet penetrations into the US intelligence and other communities. The CIA leadership was less than enthusiastic about working with a “socialist” President with “communists” in his government.
Fortunately, Mitterrand provided the leadership to engage Reagan, and Reagan remembered that as President it was his responsibility to provide for US national security, not the intelligence community.
For the past few months, France had had a mole, code name “Farewell,” operating at the heart of one of the most sensitive divisions of the KGB. During a face-to-face meeting, Mitterrand shared this secret with Ronald Reagan and revealed to him the scope of global Soviet industrial pillage. At the time, the American president did not fully understand the impact of the dossier, but he was a fast learner. Soon after, he would refer to it as “the greatest spy story of the twentieth century.”[ref] Kostin, Sergei; Raynaud, Eric (2011-08-02). Farewell: The Greatest Spy Story of the Twentieth Century . AmazonEncore. Kindle Edition. Sergei Kostin and Eric Raynaud, The Greatest Spy Story of the Twentieth Century.[/ref]
Eventually, the Russian espionage network was broken and Reagan launched the Star Wars program in part because he sensed that the Russians could not technologically respond, and the impact upon the thinking of the Russian leadership about their inability to respond would have strategic consequences. It did and was part of the military factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Another strategic dynamic was the Spanish debate about the entrance into NATO.
Here the new Spanish Administration in the 1980s, faced a significant debate about whether the US involvement with Franco meant that Spain needed to attenuate its relationship with the United States and go its own way, and to NOT join NATO.
The Russians were well aware that if the new Spain joined NATO and shaped a modern democratic military, this meant that they faced a two flank defense in depth Alliance. This meant as well that the priority on the North Atlantic would be compromised as the United States and the NATO allies could counter North Atlantic military pressures with counter pressures from the South.
President Ronald Reagan shakes hands with Mikhail Gorbachev after the two leaders signed a treaty during a ceremony in the White House East Room in Washington, D.C., in this Tuesday, Dec. 8, 1987 file photo.
With my colleague Professor Kenneth Maxwell, I engaged in debate in Spain about the importance of democratic Spain in NATO. We held a conference in Toledo Spain in 1984 which was part of the public debate, and Susan Clark and I produced a counterpart paper on the Soviet approach to Spain in military terms which made it clear whatever Spain thought about its neutrality, in case of war, the Russians had no intention of honoring it.[ref] Kenneth Maxwell (ed) Spanish Foreign and Defense Policy (Westview Press, Boulder/San Fransico/Oxford, 1991)[/ref]
Eventually, the Reagan challenge to tear down the wall would be met by the reunification efforts to create the new Germany. While at the Institute of Defense analysis in the mid 1980s, I set up a working group with members of the government to address how one might prepare for the opportunity for German reunification. But it was clear that without the overall Reagan strategy, such an option for the West was simply not on the table.
In short, after Obama, the next President will need a comprehensive strategy built on military strength but combined with an active and practical allied working agenda.
Putin lived through the Reagan strategy and it is against this which he working in the absence of a Reagan.
What might such a strategy look like in the period ahead?
I will return to this question in a later article.
Yesterday at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC, Tord Lien, Norway’s Minister of Petroleum and Energy presented his assessment of Norway, the High North and European Energy Security.
Because he is neither the Foreign nor the Defense Minister, his discussion of security was limited to discussing security for the market more or less for Norway and for sustained economic growth in the European region.
Having grown up in the Norwegian High North, the Minister emphasized that Norway unlike other members of the Arctic Council were working their resources in the region virtually year round.
Known as the Blue Arctic, Norway is able to extend its production techniques shaped in the Norwegian Continental Shelf to the Arctic region.
He focused on the importance of shaping a global natural gas market, and upon the contributions which natural gas can provide as Europe gets off of the use of coal, such as the current UK government has stated as a strategic objective.
Energy security in the broad sense for Europe, for the Minister, was having a diversity of supplies. Norway and Russia are the top natural gas suppliers to the European market, and by having the Norwegian channel as well as LNG imports from the United States, and growing supplies from Africa, Europe would not need to be dependent upon Russia, which would, thereby, enhance Norway’s security.
Another aspect of security, which the Minister discussed, was that of the pipeline network, and he expressed concern with regard to the Russian-German pipelines from this perspective.
He also focused upon the need to expand the pipelines from the High North further South into an expanded European pipeline network. Obviously, ensuring the security of such a pipeline from both a safety and protection sense is important as well.
Because Norway is already expanding its use of Arctic resources, due to its relative benign conditions, it will set the tone for dealing with Russia and other Arctic states, like Canada as the Arctic opens more generally.
And although the Minister was presenting a market driven analysis of the High North and how it fits into the long-range energy plans of Norway, there are broader security and defense challenges of course, notably with regard to Russia.
The ethnic homogeneity of Norway clearly allows Norway to use its economic benefits from the energy trade in a way countries shaped by immigration dynamics, such as Canada and the United States will not.
It is also the case that because the Norwegian High North is an integral part of Norway in a way Greenland and the Faroe Islands are not for Denmark that the concerns about outside intrusion within the internal Arctic development affairs which are central in Denmark, are not a preoccupation for Norway.
It really boils down to dealing with their closest neighbor with regard to the Arctic, namely Russia. And here the question is how to cooperate but also best to protect one’s sovereign interests.
This topic was discussed recently in Canada by the Norwegian Ambassador to Canada at the Conference on Security held in Ottowa, Canada on February 19, 2016. At that event the Ambassador highlighted the importance of the Arctic and the challenge of dealing with Russia.
To understand the rationale behind Norway’s approach it is often instructive to look at the world from a circumpolar perspective and Norway’s position geographically and strategically.
80% of our maritime areas are north of the Arctic Circle and almost 90% of the export revenues come from the sea-based economic activities and resources.
In short, Norway has important economic interests to safeguard in the north.
Norway is therefore consistent in our support for international law. Our democracy and our welfare depends on it.
Russia
Located on NATO’s northern flank, Norway puts special emphasis on the need for predictability and stability in our relations with Russia.
This is an area where NATO and Russian interests meet.
We have a common interest in keeping the High North a region of peaceful cooperation and sustainable development.
This is the situation today.
We want to keep it that way.
Russian aggression in Ukraine has demonstrated that Russian will and ability to use military force have changed the security landscape in Europe. Norwegian reactions to Russia’s violation of international law in Ukraine have therefore been clear and unambiguous.
At the same time, as neighbours that share common resources and challenges in the north, Norway has been able to continue important practical cooperation and political contact with Russia. Confidence building is in Norway’s interest.
Norway continues to support cooperation efforts in the Arctic Council and other regional forums where Russia participates. As we see it, engagement with Russia in the north contributes to maintaining the High North as a region of cooperation, low tension and respect for international law.
This year the Arctic Council celebrates 20 years of successful cooperation and enjoys a stronger position than ever internationally. [ref]This summary of the Ambassador’s remarks was provided by Chris MacLean, editor of Front Line Defence.[/ref]
In many ways, the Norwegian position taken with regard to the Russians and the Arctic is similar to how Australia discusses its relationship with China, namely, it is about enhancing commitments to rules-based regional order.
As the Norwegian Foreign Minister highlighted in a speech in Oslo on February 1, 2016 that challenge of dealing with a Russia which is a partner in the Arctic but also a global competitor:
In Europe, Norway stands firmly with Ukraine, our allies and partners in defense of the principles that have made our security and prosperity possible. We all stand to lose from an international system where no cost is imposed on those that break the rules.
Norway’s policy towards Russia will always be influenced by geographical proximity and a range of common interests, even in times of political differences.
During the Ukrainian crisis, Norway and Russia have been able to continue important practical cooperation and political contact.
Maintaining peace, stability and cooperation in the High North is a key foreign policy priority for Norway. Continuing our cooperation in the Arctic Council will remain important.
We also need to address the broader security implications of Russia’s actions – by strengthening Nato’s military capabilities and reassuring our Eastern allies of our solidarity and support. Their concerns are our concerns…..
All allies must be confident that their security concerns are taken seriously.
Norway will continue to raise Nato’s situational awareness in our region.
The video below is of Norway’s Minister of Petroleum and Energy, Tord Lien, speaking at an event hosted by the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center in Washington on February 25, 2016.
Editor’s Note: It might be noted that while the Norwegian Minister was in Washington, Norway was leading a major NATO exercise on Norwegian territory called Cold Response.
Exercise Cold Response will draw in around 750 personnel from the Royal Navy and Royal Marines, along with two warships. It will give the UK and its NATO Allies the opportunity to test crisis response during the demanding winter months.
The multi-national exercise, taking place in Norway, will also involve Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and the US.
It follows the Defence Secretary’s announcement earlier this month that the UK will double its maritime deployments to NATO in 2016.
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said:
This underlines the UK’s resolve to defend our northern allies at sea.
We are spending more on defence and increasing our maritime commitment to NATO in 2016.
All of this sends a clear message that we will respond to any threat in an increasingly dangerous world.
Exercise Cold Response covers land, sea and air elements. UK involvement focuses on maritime and will involve around 350 Royal Marines from 3 Commando Brigade working closely with Dutch marines.
The UK is also committing Type-23 frigates HMS Iron Duke and HMS Sutherland, each carrying around 200 Royal Navy personnel.
The purpose of the exercise is to demonstrate the flexibility and speed of response to reinforce NATO’s northern flank. It forms part of the UK contribution to NATO’s Assurance Measures.
Exercise Cold Response offers significant training value. The Royal Marines are the UK’s cold weather warfare specialists and this exercise concludes their annual cold weather training period in Norway.
This would constitute another element of what one might call a multifaceted Norwegian response to dealing with the Russians,
The Russian president is required to issue a revised Strategy, an unclassified and publicly available, every six year. These strategies, written by the Russian Federation Security Council in consultation with a broad range of public and private stakeholders, cover both domestic and foreign affairs.
As the overarching strategic planning document, they guide the development of more specific Russian strategies such as those relating to national defense and pubic information policy. The Strategy’s objectives typically include strengthening the country’s military power, enhancing Moscow’s international influence, advancing Russia’s economic development and competitiveness, promoting Russians national unity, and protecting the Russian Federation’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and “constitutional system.”
The most recent version of the text is supposed to guide Russia’s national security policy through the year 2020.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during his end-of-year news conference in Moscow, Dec. 17, 2015
The Strategy’s specific goals include revitalizing Russia’s global stature, strengthening law and order, and securing self-sufficiency in food. While frank in acknowledging how corruption, the shadow and offshore markets, low productivity, excessive resource dependency, and financial inefficiencies weaken Russia’s commercial competiveness, the document also depicts the West as using sanctions and other measures to weaken Russia’s economic power.
The Strategy blames the West for undermining regional order in the Middle East and Afghanistan by attempting to exploit international terrorists to depose regimes that the West does not control.
In Moscow’s view, these policies have created power vacuums that Islamist extremists have filled, resulting in massive refugees flows to Europe.
Although the Strategy is silent on Syria, one justification offered by Russian officials for the Russian military intervention there has been to reestablish the shattered regional order.
Compared to previous versions, the current text highlights the perceived challenges to Russia of NATO’s growing membership and strength, Russian economic difficulties, the weakening of traditional Russian spiritual and moral values, and international terrorism and other foreign and domestic menaces.
The current version is also more pessimistic about cooperating with Europe in particular, despite Russian efforts to split Europeans from the United States, and more enthusiastic about building ties with China and Asian partners.
The NSS claims that United States seeks to overthrow the Putin administration and other foreign governments not under Washington’s control through U.S. domination of the international information order, locally obedient puppets and NGOs, and economic and other pressure.
In Moscow’s line of thought, Washington, through its black-white policy of seeing anyone who is not with the United States as against it, will employ all instruments of power against governments that oppose U.S. hegemony.
In a January interview with Die Bildnewspaper, President Vladimir Putin traced the origins of Russian-Western tensions back to the end of the Cold War, when the West allegedly decided to exploit Russia’s weaknesses rather than partner with Moscow against common problems: “the Berlin Wall fell, but invisible walls were moved to the East of Europe,“ despite what Putin claimed were pledges by Western leaders not to enlarge NATO in exchange for Moscow’s allowing for Germany’s unification with alliance membership.
While acknowledging that every country has the right to pursue “its security the way it deems appropriate,“ Putin says that NATO leaders should have more correctly understood that their interests lay in collaborating with Russia to create a more balanced post-Cold War European security architecture.
However, Putin blames Moscow’s leadership at the time for being too timid about asserting its interests.
“ If we had presented our national interests more clearly from the beginning, the world would still be in balance today.”
In his annual review of Russian diplomacy on January 26, 2016, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov complained how the United States and its allies were taking steps to avert “a more equitable polycentric international system, to maintain dominance in global affairs and to impose one’s will on others.”
He faulted alleged Western efforts to exclude Russia from various multinational economic structures and keep non-Western views off the media.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier speaking on a panel at the security conference in Munich. Credit: Moscow News
Lavrov added:
“We are ready for the closest and most constructive cooperation with our Western partners, including Europe and the United States, and are open to a progressive development of cooperation with them.
But solely and exclusively on an equitable and mutually beneficial basis, with parties refraining from interference in each other’s internal affairs and respecting each side’s fundamental interests.”
According to Lavrov, despite Russia proposals for collaboration in the management of various crises and combating terrorism, “There are still inertia-driven attempts to contain Russia, even though this policy should have long been consigned to the archives of history, to derive unilateral advantages, and even to punish us for our independent foreign policy.”
Russian officials continued this line at the February 2016 Munich Security Conference.
“Without mentioning the West directly, Prime Minster Dmitry Medvedev claimed that U.S.-led efforts to build “economic mega-blocs” like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and “the practice of unilateral economic pressure in the form of sanctions is…undermining the operating foundations of international economic organisations, including the World Trade Organisation.”
He termed the sanctions self-destructive since they undermine mutually beneficial joint projects.
“This is a road to nowhere.
Everyone will suffer, mark my words.
It is vitally important that we join forces to strengthen a new global system that can combine the principles of effectiveness and fairness, market openness and social protection.”
In the security domain, Medvedev called “NATO’s policy towards Russia remains unfriendly and generally obdurate.”
While “Russia has been presented as well-nigh the biggest threat to NATO, or to Europe, America and other countries.”
Although he argued that the term “European security” should be seen much more broadly since “new issues have come to the fore since then, such as sustainable economic development, inequality and poverty, unprecedented migration, new forms of terrorism and regional conflicts, including in Europe.
I am referring to Ukraine, the volatile Balkans, and Moldova that is teetering on the brink of a national collapse.”
He warned that, “Speaking bluntly, we are rapidly rolling into a period of a new cold war.”
Regarding Syria, Medvedev stressed the imperative of keeping a unified Syrian state to avoid another failed terrorist-controlled state like Afghanistan, Libya, or Yemen ”if we fail to normalise the situation in Syria and other conflict areas, terrorism will become a new form of war that will spread around the world.
It will not be just a new form of war but a method of settling ethnic and religious conflict, and a form of quasi-state governance.
Imagine a group of countries that are governed by terrorists through terrorism.
Is this the 21st century?”
Russian Prime Minister Medvedev at the Munich Security Conference, 2016. Credit: Novosti
Medvedev rejected Western accusations that Russian warplanes have been attacking civilian targets in Syria:
“Nobody has any proof that we have been bombing civilian targets there, …
They do not share information. I have just said this from the stand – the military must keep in constant contact. …
Otherwise there will always be skirmishes and conflicts.”
At the Munich Conference, Lavrov also denied responsibility for the humanitarian crisis in Syria, blaming primarily the terrorists and arguing that the only lasting solution will be a political settlement between the Assad government and the non-terrorist opposition.
As an important interim measure, Lavrov likewise called for a ceasefire deeper Russian-U.S. military collaboration—“not just the prevention of accidental incidents but real coordination, identifying the areas held by terrorists and also areas that should not be targeted, etc.”
In his words, “apart from these diplomatic tools, the key instrument in solving the issue of humanitarian aid distribution and especially the issue of a ceasefire is ensuring everyday non-stop cooperation and coordination between the military, primarily the US military, who heads the coalition they made up, and the military of the Russian Federation, taking into account that we are working in the Syrian Arab Republic at the invitation of the Syrian government and [an understatement] we have certain influences on Damascus.”
Still, Lavrov faulted Western governments and media for their allegedly one-sided approach to the humanitarian issue and cited the alleged humanitarian crimes of the Ukrainian government and the use of chemical weapons by ISIS.
Medvedev joined Putin in calling for an anti-terrorist alliance against the Islamist militants “whose ideology is not based on Islamic values but on a blood-thirsty desire to kill and destroy. Terrorism is civilisation’s problem.
It’s either us or them, and it’s time for everyone to realise this.”
Yet, Medvedev returned to the line that the West was trying to distinguish between good and bad “gangsters” in Syria and other places:
“There are no nuances or undertones, no justifications for terrorist actions, no dividing terrorists into ours or theirs, into moderate or extremist.”
He accused Western leaders of risking world order by decreasing counterterrorist cooperation with Russia: “Daesh should be grateful to my colleagues, the leaders of the Western countries who have suspended this cooperation.”
Lavrov likewise asserted that, “we have failed so far to create a truly efficient anti-terrorist front, substantially due to certain countries’ inability to put aside nonentity matters and intentions to use the situation for changing political regimes and implementing other geopolitical ambitions.”
He also feared the emergence of failed states following the “collapse of Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Afghanistan, whose territories, along with Syrian territory, is being infiltrated by ISIS, who are using the lack of an efficient unified international strategy to their advantage.”
Again, while acknowledging that “Wars and related deprivations, inequality, low standards of living, violence, and fanaticism force people to flee their homes” contribute to the Europe’s migration crisis, Medvedev singled out for condemnation the “Unsuccessful attempts to spread Western models of democracy to a social environment that is not suited for this have resulted in the demise of entire states and have turned huge territories into zones of hostility.”
Appealing to European anti-immigration sentiments, Lavrov warned that, “The ongoing migration crisis is rapidly acquiring the features of a humanitarian catastrophe, at least in some parts of Europe.
Social problems are growing too, along with mutual intolerance and xenophobia.
Not to mention the fact that hundreds and thousands of extremists enter Europe under the guise of being refugees.
Other migrants are people of an absolutely different culture who only want to receive monetary benefits without doing anything to earn them.
This poses a very real danger to the common economic space.
The next targets will be the cultural space and even the European identity.“
Medvedev’s main solution was for renewed dialogue, arms control, and other exchanges: “I consider it unacceptable that this dialogue has almost ceased in many spheres.”
In his view, “When we managed to join forces, we succeeded.
There is much evidence to support this.
We managed to agree on the reduction of strategic offensive weapons, which was a breakthrough achievement.
We have worked out a compromise solution regarding Iran’s nuclear programme.
We have convinced all sides in the Syrian conflict to sit down at the negotiating table in Geneva.
We have coordinated actions against pirates.
And the Climate Change Conference was held in Paris last year.”
Lavrov too said that, ”last year’s events again proved that when one’s idea of exceptionalism is put aside, the world’s top nations – the US, the EU, China, Russia, as well as other leading countries – can manage to achieve breakthrough results.
I’m talking about the Iranian nuclear programme settlement and Syria’s chemical demilitarization.”
But he added that “to apply such collective approaches and such efficient methods, you need to get used to working as a team and not make decisions for everyone and then punish those who do not agree with such a dictate.”
Citing examples from Ukraine and Syria, moreover, Lavorv added that “often agreements are not carried out due to some of the participants’ attempt to revise them retroactively to gain unilateral advantage to the detriment of the seemingly achieved balance of interests.”
As a result, “the level of interaction between Euro-Atlantic organisations and Russia in certain spheres is even lower than during the Cold War period, not to mention the returning shibboleths of an ideological confrontation, whose conceptual basis ceased to exist a quarter of a century ago.
Mixing the propaganda with real politics to the detriment of the prospects for solving key international issues has become a sign of our times.”
If Russian leaders act in accord what they say, than the prospects for any enduring improvement in Russia’s Western relations are bleak indeed.
The Joint Air Power Competence Center or JPACC is based in Germany and was formed and focused on helping NATO member nations shape more effective airpower solutions for 21st century challenges.
According to its website:
The Joint Air Power Competence Centre (JAPCC) was formed on 1 January 2005 to provide the strategic level proponent for Joint Air and Space (A&S) Power that was missing in NATO.
Soon thereafter, JAPCC was accredited as NATO’s first Centre of Excellence (COE) and, as such, is charged with the development of innovative concepts and solutions required for the transformation of A&S Power within the Alliance and the Nations.
A&S Power SMEs, drawn from the Land, Maritime and Air components of the 15 MoU nations, conduct collaborative research into areas in which JAPCC assistance is requested by leveraging their independent thought and a global network of experts that reach across the military, academic and industrial spheres.
The resulting analysis and solutions are disseminated via studies, reports, journal articles, seminars, panels and conferences.
The JAPCC is conducting a number of interesting studies and those studies along with past publications can be found on their website.
One interesting study is looking at a very neglected issue, namely how adversaries attempt to undercut the use of airpower by the Alliance and to attenuate its effectiveness by the most non-kinetic of means, information warfare.
There is far more attention paid in NATO to the challenges of cyberwar, than to the pressing issue of how to best conduct information war against adversaries like ISIS which are both at once branding and terrorist organizations.
The study is described as follows on the JAPCC website:
By James S. Corum PhD, Dr Conrad Crane (USA), Dr Philpp Fraund (DEU), Dr Eugenio Cusumano (ITA), Dr Mathieu Chillaud (FRA), Dr James Pugh (UK)
Introduction
This study will examine one of the most serious threats against Western airpower that we now face – the disinformation campaigns carried out against NATO and coalition forces in campaigns in Afghanistan and Libya that specifically characterize airpower as an inhumane and indiscriminate weapon of war.
In fighting irregular non-state forces (and even forces in state on state war) groups and nations routinely and deliberately exaggerate the civilian casualties of aerial bombing, or even make false claims, to claim the propaganda advantage of victimhood (discussed in the book Airpower and Small Wars). Indeed such campaigns often conflate and exploit legitimate debate or genuine errors to serve their means.
In recent air campaigns airpower has been routinely portrayed as indiscriminate, enormously lethal, and causing massive collateral damage and civilian casualties.
Disinformation and misinformation published in the Western media have a powerful effect of winning sympathy for enemy forces and for undermining Western public support for military operations.
In short, groups such as al Qaeda, Taliban and affiliated groups make the NATO use of airpower a major theme in very effective information operations.
These information campaigns are some of the best weapons employed by NATO’s enemies. Besides their influence on the public, they also steer the political debate, e.g. the discussion about weaponized Unmanned Air Systems (UAS).
It is important that the nature of information campaigns that target Western airpower, including weaponized UASs, and specifically weaponized UAVs, be examined in depth so that we can better understand the opposition and its information strategy.
We need to understand the concerns and perceptions with regard to airpower and how these are dealt with by the Alliance and are exploited by its adversaries.
We need to look at the recent NATO and Western air campaigns, in Afghanistan and Libya in particular (but not excluding Iraq and Kosovo) and the degree to which disinformation and misinformation about air strikes was portrayed in the European media and the degree to which the portrayal of airpower worked to win sympathy for the enemy groups and movements and to win support for restricting or avoiding the use of airpower altogether.
With the rise of weaponized UASs we can anticipate that al Qaeda affiliates and related terror organizations (or any organisation without capable air power of its own) will use disinformation and misinformation to undermine the will of NATO nations to engage in military operations, and to specifically disallow the use of airpower in the strike role.
Aim
The aim of the study is in line with NATO’s work to identify problems and solutions to ensure that airpower continues to be a key enabler to the security of NATO.
The study will identify and analyse the information campaigns that have been mounted against NATO and Western airpower over the last fifteen years which had the intent of discrediting NATO airpower.
This study will provide doctrinal, policy and training recommendations to meet the threat of disinformation and to improve NATO’s Strategic Communications (StratCom) in employing airpower in the future.
The finalized study will support “NATO Forces 2020” by providing realistic concepts and doctrines to meet the expected challenge of disinformation in an ever changing security environment.
The study will also form the basis of a flexible module of training to be developed for NATO personnel to deal with the challenge of disinformation aimed against NATO airpower.
Scope
An in depth study will examine the role of airpower and information campaigns, particularly related to disinformation in recent air campaigns. The study will develop several case studies to examine NATO and national policies and reaction to the use of air power.
These studies will determine which themes and information strategies have worked best in countering the portrayal of airpower as being inhumane and, by these portrayals, have won international support for the enemy cause.
The case studies will determine where NATO and Western StratCom have succeeded in shaping the information environment with regard to the use of air power as well as countering the disinformation claims, and where NATO and NATO nations have not been effective and have allowed the enemy to have the information advantage.
In addition to the case studies of disinformation and airpower the study will include national case studies of the major European nations that have employed airpower and UASs in recent conflicts to answer several questions.
By examining a representative national media (major newspapers, magazines, news agencies) in each country we will determine:
How is airpower portrayed in the media?
How are UAVs portrayed in the media?
What is the public understanding of aerial strike operations?
What does the public understand of the targeting process?
To what extent do the media repeat the disinformation themes of NATO opponents?
What is the effect of the media reporting on the public view of airpower and UAVs?
In addition the study will examine how is the application of airpower considered by commanders and planners in the development of operation plans and their information strategies to communicate and counter disinformation? What systems are in place to rebut or counter disinformation? How is this trained?
The countries for special case studies will be: Germany, France, UK, Italy, and the US.
For earlier pieces on information war, see the following:
2016-02-25 As we look at the evolution of airpower, and its evolving role in military operations, we have argued that they can form the backbone for the insertion of force, properly calibrated, effects achieved and withdrawn.
Evolving concepts of operations under the influence of technology are clearly changing the ways airpower effects can be delivered.
One of the leading thinkers on this evolution is Lt. General (Retired) Deptula, the Dean of the Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies, and a contributor to Second Line of Defense and a member of the Breaking Defense Board of Contributors.
In a Breaking Defense piece published on January 20, 2016, Lt. General Deptula looked back at Desert Storm and its applied its lessons to the current air operation in the Middle East.
When the clock hit 0300 on January 17, 2016 in Baghdad, it marked the 25th anniversary of the start of Operation Desert Storm, a turning point in the conduct of modern warfare.
Desert Storm changed major conflict in five principal ways:
it set expectations for low casualties–on both sides of the conflict;
it presaged precision in the application of force;
it introduced the conduct of a joint air campaign that integrated all service air operations under the functional command of an airman;
it established desired effects as the proper focus of strategy and of the ensuing planning and conduct of operations;
and it relied on airpower for the first time ever as the principal force in the strategy and execution of a war.
Ground forces acting as a blocking force while airpower destroyed enemy forces from above during the 43 days of Desert Storm airpower. Only in the last four days of the conflict were ground forces committed to combat with the goal of evicting Iraq’s occupying forces from Kuwait.
In this respect, Desert Storm saw an inversion in the traditional paradigm of force employment. As long-time military expert Dr. Ben Lambeth put it: “…the classic roles of airpower and land power have changed places in major combat. Fixed-wing air power has, by now, proven itself to be far more effective than ground combat capabilities in creating the necessary conditions for rapid offensive success.”
Desert Storm’s opening-night attacks signaled a radical departure in the conduct of war. This was not a linear rollback campaign: It was a strategic campaign using focused attacks against key nodes in a concurrent, simultaneous fashion. More than 150 discrete targets—in addition to regular Iraqi army forces and surface-to-air missile sites—made up the master attack plan for the first 24 hours. The war began with more targets attacked in one day than the total number of targets hit by all of the Eighth Air Force in the years 1942 and 1943 combined. That was more separate targets attacked in less time than ever before in history.
Those who planned and conducted the Desert Storm air campaign applied force not just across the entire breadth and depth of the country geographically, but also across all the key strategic and operational level centers of gravity. How did it differ from previous conflicts?
Technology advances, in conjunction with an effects-based approach to planning and execution, allowed us to employ in practice for the first time a new concept of operations called “parallel” war—the simultaneous use of force across the entirety of an enemy’s system. The term comes from basic electrical circuit design. In a series circuit of lights, electrons flow from a power source to the light bulbs in sequence through each light before the next is lit—sequential flow. In a parallel circuit, electricity reaches all the lights at the same time—simultaneous flow. Applying the same concepts to the use of force yields the terms serial and parallel war.
Although simultaneous attack has always been a desired feature of offensive warfare, it had never before been attained to the level of parallel war demonstrated in Desert Storm for three reasons: First, because it previously required mass to compensate for a lack of sufficiently accurate weapons; two, because it took a large number of the available aircraft to suppress enemy air defenses, reducing those available for system attacks; and three, because traditional planners focused on sheer destruction rather than on desired effects to achieve control over an opponent.
The first two challenges required technological solutions that simply had not matured until the late 1980s. Those two solutions were stealth and precision.
US Jets from 4th Fighter Wing Fly Over Oil Fires Set by Retreating Iraqi Forces during Operation Desert Storm. USAF Photo.
To provide insight into the importance of those two developments, during the first 24 hours of Desert Storm, stealth, precision and effects-based planning allowed the use of just 36 stealthy aircraft armed with precision-guided munitions against more separate targets than the entire non-stealthy/non-precision air and missile force launched from the entire complement of six aircraft carriers and all other ships in the theater combined. That stealthy F-117 force flew fewer than 2 percent of the campaign’s combat sorties, yet struck more than 40 percent of all Iraqi fixed targets.
The combat leverage that stealth made possible in the Gulf War can be further seen in the case of the first non-stealthy attack on one target with three aimpoints on Shaiba airfield in the Basrah area of southeast Iraq. It took four Navy A-6s dropping bombs, four Saudi Tornado bomb droppers: five Marine Corps A-6Bs for jamming acquisition radars, four Air Force F-4Gs taking out one type of surface-to-air missile system, 17 Navy F/A-18s taking out another SAM system, four additional F/A-18s as escort, and three drones to force the enemy radars to radiate. That made for a total of 41 aircraft, with just eight of them dropping bombs on three aimpoints connected with just one target.
At roughly the same time, we had 20 F-117s airborne, with all 20 dropping bombs on 38 aimpoints associated with 28 separate targets. So less than half the number of aircraft hit more than twelve times the number of aimpoints.
Stealth and precision allowed the realization of the third and perhaps most important new feature of that conflict: a Concept of Operations (CONOP) aimed at achieving control over the enemy’s essential systems. It was based on an effects-based approach recognizing that undermining an adversary’s freedom to operate as desired is as important as, or even more important than, simply destroying the forces he relies on for conquest.
An underway replenishment at sea of a US and French aircraft carrier during Desert Storm. DoD photo.
We built Desert Storm’s air attack strategy by treating Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s regime as a system of systems, and we designed the operation to achieve paralysis and effective control of Saddam’s key strategic center’s of gravity: leadership; key essential systems; infrastructure; information; and fielded military forces. This was fundamentally different from a traditional military strategy of linear, direct ground assault followed by occupation.
In this regard the campaign had five main objectives:
Gain and maintain air supremacy so as to allow unhindered air operations
Isolate and incapacitate Hussein’s regime
Destroy Iraq’s nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare capability
Eliminate Iraq’s offensive military capability
Render the Iraqi Army in Kuwait ineffective, causing its collapse
These were all achieved rapidly and decisively, thus rendering Desert Storm a turning point in the annals of military history.
What made this campaign so successful?
Strong political will. President George H. W. Bush declared on August 5, 1990,“This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait.” He and his military commanders then built a strategy, formed a coalition, deployed the needed forces to execute that strategy, garnered United Nations backing, executed the strategy, and achieved its declared objectives by February 28, 1991—just seven months in all from start to a successful finish.
A comprehensive, coherent campaign plan. It focused on dismantling Iraq’s key centers of gravity—leadership, key essential systems, infrastructure, information, and military forces—so as to paralyze Iraq as a functioning state along with its military regime.
Appointing a joint-force air component commander to run the air campaign. Each aircraft, missile, and air-defense asset was assessed for the combat capability it brought to the campaign plan, irrespective of which service or country where they originated.
Instant Thunder replaced Rolling Thunder. We reversed the errors of Vietnam by replacing the gradualism of that war’s air campaign (Rolling Thunder) with the instant thunder sought and achieved in Desert Storm.
Adopted and applied a true joint approach. We used the right force at the right place at the right time—not by following the traditional land-centric approach of exclusive focus on fielded enemy forces.
F-117 nighthawks, the cutting edge stealth aircraft at the time, returning to base after their initial airstrikes. DoD photo.
In marked contrast, today’s air operations against the Islamic State are subject to a long-drawn-out vetting process, and are ultimately approved or disapproved by a ground commander. Critical Islamic State functions are allowed to continue operating because of concern that striking them may result in unintentional civilian casualties. Leaving them untouched means the Islamic State can perpetuate its terror and atrocities. There is little morality inherent in a campaign approach that limits the use of airpower to avoid thepossibility of collateral damage when it ensures the certainty of continued Islamic State crimes against humanity.
Today’s coalition leaders should factor into their casualty-avoidance calculus how many of the Islamic State’s intentional murders of innocents would be avoided by rapidly collapsing the structural elements of the Islamic State that the coalition now allows to operate out of excessive concern of inadvertent civilian deaths.
The Obama administration’s approach to destroying and degrading the Islamic State (ISIL)so far has been gradualist: 17 months so far and a prospect of years yet to come at the present rate. It is an anemic approach averaging only six strike sorties a day over those first 17 months in Syria. Also, no comprehensive and focused strategy aimed at achieving the stated objectives of degrading and destroying Daesh has been identified. The result has been an approach that is fragmented and suboptimal. Instead of destroying the enemy, Daesh has learned how to adapt to the gradual use of airpower. The enemy has maintained strength, while our allies and citizens steadily lose interest, and our able combatants in all services grow weary from their unending rotations into and out of the fight.
Perhaps it would be wiser to apply the tenets that made Desert Storm such a success to the challenge of the Islamic State. Doing so will require our replacing the current desert drizzle with a thunderstorm—aimed not just at the hands of the Islamic State, but at its head and heart as well.
In the video below, Lt. General (Retired) Deptula discusses Operation Desert Storm in a 25th Anniversary look back with Defense News editor, Vago Muradian.
And in Senate testimony last Fall, Lt. General (Retired) Deptula discussed how the renorming of airpower was taking forward lessons learned from Desert Storm.
On November 5, 2015, Lt. General (Retired) Deptula testified in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The key topic was the challenge of revisiting the roles and missions of the Armed Forces.
This is especially crucial because of the more than decade long legacy of fighting a niche style of land war.
The use of the military in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11 has been largely defined in terms of using the air and naval services to support ground forces doing Counter Insurgency Operations or COIN.
In the first decade of the 21st century, groupthink set into the Pentagon and resulted in COIN becoming dominant, to the point that other joint options were shut out from consideration.
The groupthink of COIN resulted in key elements of a fighting force being crafted in the image of COIN, with its slow motion warfare; hierarchical C2; the growth of the OOLDA (Observe, Orient, Legally Review, Decide, and Act) loop replacing a decisive, quick action OODA or Observe, Orient, Decide and Act loop; K-Mart type of logistics to support capabilities; significant numbers of Forward Operating Bases or FOBs in the battlespace; and all dependent on uncontested, permissible air space.
We are seeing the results of this “fallout” in the current operations in Syria and Iraq—an approach reflective of fighting the last war.
In his testimony, Deptula underscored that:
In the information age, we have to acknowledge that deploying large numbers of
American military forces onto foreign soil to nation-build, vice accomplish a defined mission and leave, is simply counter-productive to securing our goals and objectives.
Strategies centered upon occupation and attrition warfare expose vulnerabilities, invariably result in anti-American backlash and domestic disapproval, and often create destabilizing effects within the very state or region they are intended to secure.
He added that:
We must actively pursue and invest in options we can use to counter the increasingly advanced anti-access strategies and technologies our adversaries are likely to employ. Systems such as precision weapons and stealth aircraft projected incredible lethality at the end of the Cold War.
Those capabilities did not disappear.
They continued to advance and proliferate. One quarter of a century later, it is foolhardy to assume U.S. forces will be afforded freedom of action in future engagements. Our strategies, planning assumptions, acquisition programs, and training need to account for this reality.
The day after he gave testimony, we discussed his thoughts with regard to how to more effectively build out the integrated combat power crucial to 21st century challenges.
Question: What would you highlight in terms of key conclusions, which you put in front of the Committee with regard to shaping an effective way ahead?
Lt. General (Retired) Deptula: There are two main conclusions that were highlighted.
The first was that we should not focus simply on one medium of warfare.
If we want to maintain our position as the world’s sole superpower, for all the right reasons that we should, we need to have the strongest Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force in the world.
This isn’t about one service versus another. This is about keeping the unique capabilities the services provide, but to capitalize on the technologies that will allow us to accomplish and succeed in different ways than we have in the past.
We need to reevaluate the roles and functions of the services in the light of the information age, as opposed simply to adjusting the traditional approach of combined arms, industrial age warfare.
New technologies enable new concepts of operation that, in turn, allow new organization or constructs that allow for innovation. We can apply innovation to organizations just as much as we can apply them from technologies.
A key example of how new technologies—which are already here, and are at the same time still evolving—can provide for significant change in our concepts of operation, are fifth generation systems. Modern aircraft are no longer just replacements for what went before. Aircraft like F-22, F-35, LRSB, are not just “F’s” or “B’s.”
They are flying sensor-shooters.
For example, an F-35’s wingman doesn’t necessarily need to be another F-35. It could be an Aegis destroyer or an advanced land vehicle; we need to think about applying the capabilities that these aircraft now have resident in them today, to reworking how the joint force can operate tomorrow.
They should be viewed as information nodes in what can be constructed as an ISR-strike- maneuver-sustainment complex. These aircraft will become integral parts of a “combat cloud,” which inverts the paradigm of the way we think about these systems.
They’re not just airplanes for the sole purpose of shooting down another airplane; or for dropping bombs. They will form the basis of a much larger complex that if properly designed will pose an adversary an enormously challenging problem. If you take out several of these nodes, that will not affect the overall power of the combat cloud because the capabilities they provide will reroute among the other elements.
The underlying basis of what some have called the third offset strategy, will be the ubiquitous exchange and sharing of information in a seamless fashion, and that is what the real advantage of F-35, F-22, and eventually the LRS-B, bring to the equation. We are beginning to see that with how the F-22 is being used today in the Middle East.
The first combat uses of the F-22 were not to shoot down another airplane. There were used to conduct multiple tasks — ISR, strike, airborne warning, intercept, battle management, command and control. The F-22 essentially acts as a quarterback for all of the aircraft airborne and increases the situational awareness of the entire force.
Question: The power projection services are already innovating in ways not widely recognized as one thinks about force transformation, the Osprey for the USMC, and the F-22 for the Air Force, to cite two examples.
How might it be possible to get a broader analytical understanding of the innovation already inherent and resident in the force, rather than analysts simply coming up with suggestions for a future force structure, uninformed by the innovation already underway?
Lt. General (Retired) Deptula: Quite frankly, it’s by providing examples of innovation and exposing as many people to change already underway as possible. It’s getting the word out in ways that Second Line of Defense does, and hammering home over and over and over again until, folks open their minds to the potential of what these systems are actually capable of doing. Once we get them in the field, that potential gets actualized. That’s what happened with the F-22.
Today, the Joint Force Air Component Commander in Central Command rarely launches a force package into Syria without having an F-22 with the force. That’s because the F-22 enhances the entire effort. That is an example of change that has happened, but is not widely understood. The mid-grade pilots and their squadron and wing commanders who are experiencing these attributes of 5th generation capability will be crucial to the transformation already inherent with the F-22, and soon to be accelerated with the F-35, and later with the LRS-B.
Question: We will be going to the Langley AFB exercise with F-22s flying with Typhoons and with Rafales. All of these aircraft are a decade old in combat terms, and are now coming into their own; it takes time to reshape concepts of operations to work with new combat technology and that reworking then informs what comes next.
Does that make sense to you?
Lt. General (Retired) Deptula: It does.
The coming of the F-35 is a good case in point.
All the naysayers on the F-35 challenge it for all the wrong reasons.
They challenge it on the basis of a last century concept of operations as opposed to thinking about the next round of innovation of which it will be an integral element.
Question: You were one of the key architects for Desert Storm in 1991. How would characterize the impact of the allies being on the ground floor with the F-35 and how they can play a role different from 1991?
Lt. General (Retired) Deptula: In Desert Storm, allies were important for many reasons, but on the military side provided limited, and very specialized contributions. With an allied F-35 fleet we can work from the ground up with regard to the kind of air operations most appropriate to the particular task from the outset.
A strategic advantage that accrues from the stable of nations that have the F-35 is that combined ownership of the same advanced aircraft solidifies a partnership at the same level of knowledge and capability as we have ourselves, and that truly makes this a unifying system.
Question: You spoke to the Committee about the importance of shaping effective integration for the services, not just collaborative jointness.
How would you describe the way ahead with regard to integration?
Lt. General (Retired) Deptula: Jointness means that among our four services, a separately developed and highly specialized array of capabilities is provided through service or functional components to a joint force commander — his or her job is to assemble a plan from among this “menu” of capabilities, applying the appropriate ones for the contingency at hand.
It does not mean four separate services deploy to a fight and simply align under a single commander. It does not mean, “going along to get along.” Nor does jointness mean everybody necessarily gets an equal share of the action. Jointness does not mean homogeneity. In fact, what is often misunderstood about joint operations is that its strength resides in the separateness of the service components.
The reason joint force operations create synergies is because this approach capitalizes on each services’ core functions — functions that require much time, effort, and focus to develop the competencies required to exploit operations in their respective domains.
It takes 20-25 years to develop a competent division commander, a surface action group commander, a Marine Expeditionary Force commander, or an aerospace expeditionary force commander. The beauty of the joint approach to warfare is that every contingency will be different, and that a joint approach allows a joint task force commander to tailor make a force optimal and unique to the particular contingency facing him or her.
We can no longer afford individual services seeking self-sufficiency.
Let’s take the example of the A-10.
The Air Force would like to retain the A-10 but given the resource constraints mandated by the Congress reducing the Air Force budget, the Air Force must reduce force structure to meet that requirement. After extensive comparative analysis, terminating the A-10 would result in the least impact to the spectrum of capabilities provided by the Air Force.
The Army maintains a very large fleet of Apache helicopters that conduct close air support. The A-10 is a much more capable asset to conduct close air support. So why not retire a part of the Apache force to achieve the same cost savings as retiring the entire A-10 force–that would allow still retaining a significant number of Apaches in the Army–and also retain the more capable A-10 force?
The point is to think across service boundaries in the context of capability, not limit force structure trades inside service stovepipes.
That’s the kind of interdependency we need to evolve toward, not only in terms of application of force, but also in thinking about system acquisition as well.
It’s all about joint effects, not service “lanes in the road.”
Lord Thomas Cochrane after founding the Chilean navy, and guaranteeing the independence of Chile by audacious naval action along the Pacific coast, was invited in 1823 by D. Pedro, the son of the Portuguese monarch, who had declared the independence of Brazil from Portugal, to command the new Brazilian navy with the rank of “First Admiral of Brazil” and for a sum considerably higher than he had received in Chile.
With his trademark use of subterfuge and deception and audacity he provided essential naval support for the victory of Brazilian armed forces in Bahia, Pernambuco, Belem, as well as Maranhao.
His actions did much to assure Brazilian successes in the Northeast and North of the country.
In a little under four months he had liberated over 2000 miles of territory from the Portuguese.
Pedro made him Marques of Maranhao as a reward.
But Lord Cochrane ran into endless problems over the payment of his prize money and back pay, not only for himself, but for his naval officers and crews.
And as in Chile he ran into endless political and factional backstabbing. When he arrived back in Portsmouth in 1825 aboard a Brazilian frigate it was the first time the flag of the Brazil was formally saluted by a European state.
Yet he is not well thought of in Brazil, and particularly in Maranhao.
Former Senator Jose Sarney (PMDB, AP), head of one of the most powerful Maranhao political dynasties, on an official visit to London, when he was President of Brazil, went to Westminster Abbey, where Lord Cochrane is buried.
He is reported to have exclaimed: “Corsario. Piso e piso com gosto! E um sujeito pelo qual merece so o despreco e o meu asso.” ( “Pirate. I stamp on him with pleasure. He was a character that only warrants my disrespect and condemnation” ).
Sarney was partly right.
Lord Cochrane was an impecunious Scottish nobleman avid for pecuniary rewards.
He had told his brother on his arrival in Chile that: “I have every prospect of making the largest fortune which can be made in our days, save that of the Duke of Wellington.” Prize money was an accepted part of British naval practice at the time.
But Lord Cochrane’s pursuit of monetary rewards was to tarnish his reputation.
Cochrane was a famous Royal Navy frigate captain during the Napoleonic wars. He was called the “sea wolf” by the French.
His father had been an unsuccessful Scottish inventor and investor who had left his families fortunes in a parlous state. He had discovered that coal gas could be used for illumination, but others were to make their fortunes from gas lighting.
He had lost his great estate of Culross Abbey, which overlooked the Firth of Forth up river from Edinburgh, and which held vast and potentially profitable mineral deposits and pine forests. Cochrane was largely self educated at home and then attended a military academy in London.
But Cochrane’s uncle, a frigate captain, aided the young Lord Cochrane’s entrance into the Royal Navy in 1793. He subsequently found fame with his daring naval exploits.
Destruction of the French Fleet in Basque Roads by Thomas Sutherland after a painting by Thomas Whitcombe, 1817/On the night of 11 April 1809 Captain Lord Cochrane led a British fireship attack against a powerful French force anchored in the Basque Roads. In the attack all but two of the French ships were driven ashore.
But he made enemies and his triumphs were often followed by disappointments and recriminations. Elected a member of Parliament for Westminster, then one of the most open electorates in the country, he espoused radical cases and vociferously criticized corruption and incompetence in the navy thoroughly alienating senior members of the naval and the political establishments.
Cochrane totally lacked tact and diplomacy.
Most notorious was his alleged involvement in a major stock exchange scandal in 1814. One of his uncles had been involved in a plot to manipulate the value of shares by spreading the false information that Napoleon had died.
He had not. The plotters had hoped to make quick gains. A famous trail ensued. Cochrane always maintained his innocence.
But he was convicted, ordered to pay £1,000, and to stand in the pillory opposite the Royal Exchange (which he did not do.)
The Prince Regent, however, stripped Lord Cochrane of the Order of the Bath, awarded for his naval heroism, and he was expelled from the Royal Navy. His invitation to command naval forces in Chile and Brazil, and later to Greece, promised a rehabilitation of sorts.
But it took years before his reputation was reestablished.
Cochrane was not reinstated in the Royal Navy until 1832, when he was promoted to be a Rear-Admiral. He was given the command of the North American and West Indian fleet in 1848. Based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Bermuda, and Kingston, Jamaica, admiral Lord Cochrane took bitumen from the pitch lake in Trinidade to experiment with mixing it with coal as fuel a stream vessel, part of his squadron. His admiral’s flag was lowered at Portsmouth in 1851 when he was 75 years of age.
Lord Cochrane, now earl of Dundonald, continued with his innovations and experiments, including the application of steam engines to fighting vessels (he had brought the first steam powered vessel to the Pacific).
During the Crimean War he sought to have the Royal Navy experiment with the use of smoke screens and poison gas against Russian ships at Sebastapol. Poison gas was considered by a secret committee of the Admiralty which consulted the scientist Michael Faraday, who agreed that the burning of sulpur would produce deadly fumes.
But the plans were shelved. Cochrane also experimented with a stream-powered rotary engine of his design for the use on the new railways. An unsuccessful prototype was installed on George Stephenson’s famous locomotive “The Rocket.”
It was not, however, until 1857, that Brazil sent bills of exchange in the value of £34.000 to cover his claims of Brazilian back pay. Only the day before his funeral in 1860, by the command of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, was his banner and regalia of the Order of the Bath (discovered apparently in a junk shop) restored in the King Henry VII chapel in Westminster Abbey.
The present Governor of Maranhao, Flavio Dino (PCdoB), no friend of the Sarney clan which has long dominated Maranhao state, published a decree in the “Diario Official do Estado” on January 14, 2016, which removed the names of all “living politicians” from the state’s educational institutions, seven of which were named in honor of former Brazilian President and former Maranhao governor Jose Sarney.
Lord Cochrane is best remembered today more for his literary than for his historical legacy.
C.S. Forester based his Horatio Hornblower novels on the exploits of Lord Cochrane.
Patrick O’Brian did the same in his Captain Aubrey novels.
The 2003 film “Master and Commander” with Russell Crowe as captain Jack Aubrey, and Basil Bettany as Dr Stephen Maturin, was based on Lord Cochrane and his long term friend, the naval surgeon, James Guthrie.
Former President and former Maranhao governor, Jose Sarney, a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters and of Maranhao Academy of Letters, as well as a novelist, will understand the irony.
Editor’s Note: This article posted on History.Net provides some additional details on Cochrane’s role in naval innovation.
In March 1812, Britain’s prince regent, the future George IV, received from an officer in the Royal Navy a secret proposal aimed at undermining the power of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s military might in a manner guaranteed to revolutionize the rigid customs of warfare.
At that time, General Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, was struggling through Spain. The strength of the Royal Navy was being sapped by the need to maintain a tedious blockade of the key French ports where Bonaparte’s warships waited for an opportunity to escape into the Atlantic.
The naval officer’s proposal, which the prince turned over to his advisers, offered a radical scheme by which a beachhead on the coast of France could be gained quickly and decisively.
The author of the plan was Captain Sir Thomas, Lord Cochrane, a man whose exploits exceeded in fact what most of his progeny in naval fiction have been able to accomplish.
His career began quite inconspicuously at age 17 in June 1793, when he joined his uncle, Captain Alexander Cochrane, aboard the 28-gun frigate Hind as a midshipman. His father, Archibald, the ninth Earl of Dundonald, was an unsuccessful inventor with disastrous pecuniary habits who provided his 6-foot-2-inch, redheaded heir with little beyond the necessities of life.
Nevertheless, the young man was destined to set the naval world on its ear.
Within three years of his enlistment, Thomas Cochrane gained a lieutenancy, and in 1800 he was given command of His Majesty’s Ship Speedy, a brig-sloop armed with 14 puny 4-pounder cannons, with which he nevertheless managed to capture the Spanish frigate Gamo in May 1801. Such an impressive feat, combined with a string of other captures, should have won Cochrane an immediate and splendid advancement to one of the sleekest greyhounds in the British fleet.
Cochrane, however, was by nature a supreme idealist who did not hesitate for a moment to point out problems to his superiors and to argue tenaciously for justice as he perceived it. As a result, it was not until 1804, when a change in governmental administration brought Henry Dundas, first Viscount Melville and a fellow Scot, to Whitehall, that Cochrane finally was given the freshly built frigate Pallas (32 guns) and carte blanche to patrol the North Atlantic convoy route near the Azores.
Within two months, Cochrane had seized such a vast amount of enemy shipping and cargo that he alone earned 75,000 pounds sterling in prize money and returned to Portsmouth with 5-foot-tall candlesticks made of solid gold strapped to the mastheads. Cochrane’s later raids on the Biscay Coast caused Napoleon to label him ‘le loup des mers‘ (the sea wolf), and raised his reputation among the British public to an exalted height.
Cochrane’s star was fated to crash to earth, however. Following the mishandling of a British squadron under Admiral James Gambier in an action against a French squadron at Aix Roads in April 1809, Cochrane, who had attained partial success early in the operation, became embroiled in Gambier’s resultant court-martial.
The admiral was acquitted, but Cochrane lacked the skills in public debate that he demonstrated in combat, and he suffered personal humiliation as a result of the inquiry. That experience, combined with his election to Parliament as an independent but reform-minded member for the village of Honiton, helped to earn him numerous political enemies and to delay his reassignment to another command afloat.
Cochrane did not sit around and stew, however. It was during that period of unemployment that Cochrane proposed to Prince George his unique approach for freeing the Royal Navy squadrons from their arduous blockades and for reducing the fortifications that protected the critical French ports.
Cochrane detailed for the prince regent the use of two innovative weapons systems, the ‘temporary mortar,’ or ‘explosion ship,’ and the’sulphur ship,’ or’stink vessel.’ An early version of the former device already had been used with only partial success during the opening phase of the Aix Roads action in 1809. Cochrane had been ordered by the Admiralty to employ fire ships against the 11 ships of the line and sundry frigates under Vice Adm. Comte Allemand, since Gambier had refused to employ such vile means to dislodge the enemy.
Along with the conventional fire ships, Cochrane also had sent against the French three vessels crammed with 1,500 barrels of gunpowder topped with shells and grenades. The floating powder kegs, set off by fuses, were designed to vent their wrath against the enemy in colossal detonations, but a protective boom set up by the French to stop the fire ships also frustrated Cochrane’s explosion ships.
In his thorough presentation to the prince regent in 1812, Cochrane modified the design of the original explosion ship. For each temporary mortar, a hulk, rather than a rigged vessel, was to be used. The decks would be removed, and an inner shell would be constructed of heavy timbers and braced strongly to the hull. In the bottom of the shell would be laid a layer of clay, into which obsolete ordnance and metal scrap were embedded. The ‘charge,’ in the form of a thick layer of powder, would next be placed, and above that would be laid rows and rows of shells and animal carcasses.
The explosion ship would then be towed into place at an appropriate distance from anchored enemy ships, heeled to a correct angle by means of an adjustment in the ballast loaded in the spaces running along each side of the hulk between the inner and outer hulls, and anchored securely. When detonated, the immense mortar would blast its lethal load in a lofty arc, causing it to spread out over a wide area and to fall on the enemy in a deadly torrent.
Experiments conducted with models in the Mediterranean, during his layoff, convinced Cochrane that three explosion ships, properly handled, could saturate a half-mile-square area with 6,000 missiles–enough destructive force to cripple any French squadron even if it lay within an enclosed anchorage.
The follow-up to the explosion ship, or temporary mortar, would be an attack on land fortifications once again using hulks. As before, clay would be used to line the old hull, but the upper deck would remain intact so that it could be covered first with a layer of charcoal, then with an amount of sulphur equaling about one-fifth the volume of the fuel. It was intended to float such a potential stink vessel up against a shore battery or fortification when the wind blew landward, and then ignite the charcoal.
The resultant clouds of ‘noxious effluvia,’ as Cochrane termed them, were expected to be pungent enough to reduce all opposition as the defenders ran away to escape the choking gas.
A quick landing by British marines could then secure an otherwise unattainable position and clear the way for the establishment of a beachhead. Cochrane had also experimented with that technique, drawing on the propensity he had inherited from his father for dabbling in chemistry, in particular with the properties of coal and its byproducts, coke and coal tar.
The prince regent turned Cochrane’s ideas over to a panel of experts that included Sir William Congreve and his son; the king’s second son, Frederick Augustus (the Duke of York); and two admirals, George, Lord Keith and Lord Exmouth (the former Sir Edward Pellew). At length, that expert panel decided that there was merit in Cochrane’s unusual scheme, but fear of the implications that such radical devices would have on conventional warfare stifled their enthusiasm.
What would happen, they mused, if the enemy gained knowledge of this frightful new technology and turned it against Britain’s defenses? The proposal was rejected, and Cochrane pledged never to make the details known to the public.
During the next two decades, numerous opportunities presented Cochrane with reasons to forsake his promise of silence. His cries in Parliament for naval reforms raised the ire of his political enemies, who worked to defame him.
When the London Stock Exchange scandal erupted in 1814, Cochrane unwittingly found himself among the men charged with illegal financial manipulations. The outcome of the case brought Cochrane imprisonment, dismissal from the Royal Navy and the removal of his knighthood.
In 1818, Cochrane left England and spent the next 10 years serving as a fabulously successful mercenary admiral for Chile, Peru, Brazil and Greece. Returning home in 1829, he campaigned for British officials to take another look at his past crimes, which he accomplished three years later when, having inherited the title of Earl of Dundonald, he was pardoned by King William IV and readmitted to the navy list with the rank of rear admiral of the fleet.
As a proponent of steam vessels and reform in the navy, Cochrane stayed active, but he spent only three years (18491851) on full pay, as commander in chief of the West Indies station. In 1853, as the possibility of war in the Crimea increased, Cochrane proposed to the Admiralty the use of explosion ships and stink vessels at Sevastopol on the Black Sea, or in the Baltic at Kronstadt, as a means of destroying Russian entrenchments. The idea was quickly dismissed by First Lord of the Admiralty Sir James Graham.
The next year brought the certainty of war, and Cochrane–then 79 years old–was considered for placement as commander in chief of the Baltic fleet. The fact that he was passed over was not due to his advanced age, however. Graham explained in a letter to Queen Victoria that Prime Minister George Aberdeen and his cabinet feared that Cochrane’s ‘adventurous spirit’ would lead him to perform’some desperate enterprise,’ which might complicate the difficult international situation.
In July 1854, Cochrane again urged Graham to employ his patent stink vessels to route the Russian troops away from the fortifications of the harbor at Kronstadt, so that a British landing could be made and the enemy’s guns manned and turned on the Russian ships anchored beneath the batteries. He even offered his services as a consultant to accompany Sir Charles Napier, who had been given charge of the British fleet. Once more, however, the scheme was rejected, and Napier sailed to the Baltic, where he eventually failed to subdue Kronstadt.
Cochrane supported Napier’s efforts publicly, but informed a newspaper correspondent that he had provided the government with a plan that could solve the problem. No journalistic investigation appears to have been undertaken to determine the nature of that plan, even though Cochrane sought command of the fleet in 1855 when the new prime minister, Henry John Temple, Lord Palmerston, came to power.
Once again, Cochrane suggested to the press that utilization of his unnamed innovative devices would mean that a little more than a week of fair weather in the Crimea would be enough to settle the conflict. Cochrane took his appeal to Parliament, where he sought support for forcing the government to employ his new weapons against the enemy.
Public support increased for using the weapon, and it was even suggested that private funds be used to equip the admiral with the resources he needed to get the job done independently.
Throughout the debate, the details of the scheme remained secret. In the board room at the Admiralty, the plan showed the stink vessels with layers of coke and sulphur ready to emit their choking fog.
Added to the scheme, however, was the intention to create a smoke screen by burning barrels of tar or pouring naphtha onto the surface of the harbor and igniting it with potassium. Cochrane figured that a few hours would accomplish what months of debilitating conventional warfare had failed to achieve.
Palmerston’s government appeared to be close to sanctioning the strategy when Sevastopol was taken in September 1855, followed soon by the war’s end. All discussion of the revolutionary weapons was dropped, and the plans were sealed away on the shelves reserved for confidential materials at Whitehall.
Sir Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, died on October 31, 1860. His secret war plans remained secure until 1908, when Lord Palmerston’s correspondence was published. Less than a decade later, the sulphuric yellow clouds of mustard gas ravaged thousands in the trenches of France.
2016-02-18 We have discussed the evolution of Italian Airpower with senior Italian Air Force leaders.
And the Italian reshaping of their airpower capabilities with the modernization of the Eurofighter and the building, deploying and integration of the F-35, both the the As and the Bs, is a key part of the way ahead for Italy and its role in coalition operations through the Mediterranean and beyond.
The standing up of the Cameri facility in only four years, and building the first two F-35s outside of the United States is a major achievement.
And with the first F-35 transatlantic flight recently conducted by Ninja, the all-Italian air package — one F-35, two Eurofighters and two KC-767 tankers — crossed the Atlantic from the Azores in 7 hours against stiff headwinds.
The pilot had only 50 hours on the F-35 prior to the flight and the plane only 15 flight hours.
Even though Italy is clearly working airpower transformation, and the Italian Navy is on track to buy F-35Bs to replace their harriers for the Cavour, we have heard very little from them about how the evolution of Airpower intersects with naval modernization.
In a recently piece written by Commander Mauizio Modesto of the Italian Navy and published in the JPACC Journal, a perspective is provided with regard to “Italian Naval Air Power: New Challenges and Capabilities.”
At the end of the article we learn that:
A further major challenge ahead for Italian Naval Air Power is the renewal of embarked fixed wing aircraft with the gradual replacement of AV88 Plus with the STOVL version of the F-35B.
The F-35B is a revolutionary aircraft wit extraordinary operational capabilities supported by a logistics system with global reach that will allow the Italian Navy to make a leap into 5th generation combat aircraft.
The article provides a look at the evolving strategic situation within which the Italian Navy is operating and the need to extend its reach and to ensure the flexibility of operational capabilities to operate throughout the spectrum of warfare in a fluid and dynamically changing situation in the Mediterranean.
The F-35 is a key element for providing the kind of ISR and C2 which a dispersed fleet will need while operating across the Mediterranean and in the Atlantic.
But what is not clear is whether the Italian Navy really grasps this fundamental point about the capability.
And the F-35Bs which can fly organically off of the Cavour can link directly and instantly with the Italian Air Force F-35s flying from land bases or those of the coalition.
As a senior RAF pilot put it with regard to the shift from Harrier to F-35B which will fly from the Queen Elizabeth: “Before I leave the flight deck I will see the battlespace from my cockpit through my connectivity with F-35s already flying in the objective area.”
Taking this concept back to the Italian Navy and its consideration looking forward, getting to Beaufort Air Station and working with the RAF and the USMC might make a great deal of sense to build the F-35B and its operations into the ground floor of shaping the Italian Navy’s way ahead.
Unfortunately, the current approach seems to be dealing with the F-35B was silver bullet or high-end asset which will be added like a cherry on the cake.
What the Marines and the RAF have emphasized is that it is not that at all — but a building block for shaping the future evolution for the operation of the sea services in a hybrid strategic environment.
The Italian Air Force is building its coalition capability from the ground up at Luke AFB.
As Ninja, the first F-35 pilot to cross the Atlantic put it:
“We are learning together from the ground up. We are learning the same Tactics, Training and Procedures (TTPs) from the ground up. This builds in coalition possibilities which we can shape going forward.”
The Cavour will be eventually be stocked with the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter, replacing the aging Harriers. It has room for ten F-35Bs in the hanger and six on the deck. Credit Photo: Italian Navy
The Italian Navy has a similar opportunity at Beaufort Marine Corps Air Station.
And doing so now is crucial so that the approach and capabilities of the aircraft are seamlessly integrated into the transformation of the Italian Navy and not added as an afterthought.
It is about fifth generation enablement; not 5th generation layered on top of a legacy approach, fleet and concept of operations.
By having very flexible air assets operate across the Gator Navy, and the Osprey is the current driving force for change, the entire sea base operates differently.
Add the F-35 B as a “flying combat system” and the capabilities are not only enhanced by the role of each individual key ship, which can operate F-35Bs, will become key elements for the distributed force.
For the first time, amphibious ships and carriers the size of the Cavour will carry their own airborne C5ISR capabilities.
This means that the smaller ships will not only carry more organic punch, but be able to provide overwatch and strike support to a distributed fleet.
The intersection of land based and seabased assets can conjoined in coordinated operations as the F-35 fleet becomes a reality operating in the Mediterranean as well.
A ship like the Cavour, operating F-35Bs, can form a centerpiece of a maritime operational force or provide overwatch and strike support for an allied coalition force, seen as a distributed force.
Given Italy’s key location in the Mediterranean, its land and sea based assets can be blended into a more coherent capability to protect Italian interests by more effectively combining its air assets around the F-35.
For example, if one looks at the Mediterranean and considers simply the deployment of three F-35B carriers, the Cavour, the new Queen Elizabeth class or the USS America class, the Mediterranean can be considered under the reach of the air fleet but one clearly considered not as an end in itself but as integral part of joint and coalition operations.
