Better Homeland Defenses Needed Against EMP Threat

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09/04/2011
(Credit: http://standeyo.com/NEWS/08_Sci_Tech/081202.EMP.attack.html)

By Dr. Richard Weitz

09/04/2011 – An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a high-intensity burst of electromagnetic energy caused by the rapid acceleration of charged particles. Once the pulse reaches electronic devices, it disables, damages, or destroys them. An electromagnetic bomb (E-bomb), the deliberate creation of EMP for attacking targets, represents a genuine weapon of mass disruption. Effective use of an EMP could have a devastating effect on the infrastructure of many systems.

At last week’s MAKS 2011 air show, a Russian company unveiled the perfect EMP delivery vehicle: a unique cruise missile system that can be deployed and fired from a standard 40-foot shipping container, from ships, rail cars or even off the back of a truck.

Morinformsystem-Agat JSC is marketing the system as “Pandora’s box.” They claim it can be delivered with the Novator Klub-K 3M-54TE cruise missile. The system can be placed in the self-contained box, along with two crewmembers in a sealed cabin with their communications and targeting systems. The missile can use its inertial guidance system to hit ground targets as far as 270 kilometers away using a high-explosive warhead.

But it could also be used to detonate an EMP weapon above the target.

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned of this “Scud-in-a-bucket” threat in 2004, but the United States has yet to develop sufficient maritime domain awareness to identify and monitor all foreign vessels that operate in the North Atlantic or East Pacific oceans. U.S. air defenses, never very strong, have also deteriorated since the end of the Cold War.

A strong U.S. Coast Guard presence and new combat aircraft based along the U.S. coasts could help reduce the danger of such an attack.

The EMP phenomenon was not evident during the first use of nuclear weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The two bombs detonated below the necessary altitude to have their EMP reflected by the Earth’s magnetic field, while the electric systems of the B-29 bombers used to release the weapons employed vacuum tubes, which are resistant to EMP flux.

But when the United States began high-altitude testing of nuclear weapons over the Pacific in the early 1960s, the potentially devastating effects of EMP on even distant ground targets attracted widespread attention within the U.S. defense community.

For example, in the 1962 Starfish Prime test, when a nuclear weapon was detonated 400 kilometers (250 miles) above Johnston Island in the Pacific, electrical equipment over 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) away in Hawaii was affected. Streetlights, alarms, circuit breakers and communications equipment all showed signs of distortions and damage. Still, during the Cold War, the United States had other priorities besides worrying about a Soviet EMP attack.

It has only been in the last decade that the U.S. Government has finally engaged in a comprehensive effort to understand better the threat posed by a possible EMP attack against the United States. Most notably, the U.S. Congress established the Commission to Assess the Threat from High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP Commission) in 2001.

(Credit: http://standeyo.com/NEWS/08_Sci_Tech/081202.EMP.attack.html)(Credit: http://standeyo.com/NEWS/08_Sci_Tech/081202.EMP.attack.html)

In July 2004, the EMP Commission issued a five-volume report that warned the United States was extremely vulnerable to a catastrophic EMP attack. Indeed, the Commission’s report concluded that, “Our increasing dependence on advanced electronics systems results in the potential for an increased EMP vulnerability of our technologically advanced forces, and if unaddressed makes EMP employment by an adversary an attractive asymmetric option.” The Commission proposed a five-year plan aimed at protecting critical infrastructure from a potential EMP attack, which has never been fully implemented.

The Threat Explained

There are three components to an electromagnetic pulse. The first is the electromagnetic shock that disrupts electronics such as sensors, communications systems, protective systems, computers, and other similar devices. It occurs in less than a billionth of a second and covers the largest distance of the three components.

The middle-time component has a slightly smaller range and is similar in effect to lightening. Although protective measures have long been established for lightning strikes, the potential for damage to critical infrastructure from this component nevertheless exists because it rapidly follows and compounds the first component.

The final component is slower than the previous two, but has a longer duration. It is a pulse that flows through electricity transmission lines – damaging distribution centers and fusing power lines. The combination of the three components can cause irreversible damage to many electronic systems.

An EMP can be generated from natural sources, such as lightning or solar storms interacting with the earth’s atmosphere, ionosphere and magnetic field. It can also be artificially created using a nuclear weapon or a variety of non-nuclear devices. It has long been proven that EMPs can disable electronics, as demonstrated by solar storms, lightning strikes and atmospheric nuclear explosions before the cessation of such tests.

The effect has also been recreated by EMP simulators designed to reproduce the electromagnetic pulse of a nuclear device and study how the phenomenon affects various kinds of electrical and electronic devices such as power grids, telecommunications and computer systems, both civilian and military.

The effects of an EMP — both tactical and strategic — have the potential to be quite significant, but they are also quite uncertain. The precise EMP effects vary depending on many factors. One of the most important variables is altitude. Test data from actual high-altitude nuclear explosions is extremely limited. Only the United States and the Soviet Union conducted atmospheric nuclear tests above 20 kilometers and, combined, they carried out fewer than 20 actual tests.

The most effective altitude is above the visible horizon. If detonation is too low, most of the electromagnetic force from the EMP will be driven into the ground, creating deadly nuclear fallout that deprives the weapon of its non-casualty appeal. Damage is inversely related to the target’s distance from the epicenter of detonation.

In general, the further from the epicenter, the weaker the EMP effects. Yield is another factor to consider. The higher the yield the greater the effect. Even so, since the effects travel through electric lines and waterways, and have secondary spillover impacts on other infrastructure, it is difficult to predict in advance the possible extent of damage from a large-scale EMP attack.

Most vulnerable to an EMP pulse are objects plugged into power grids and commercial computer equipment. Although the EMP is commonly classified as a non-casualty weapon, an EMP detonation would affect vehicle motors, aircraft ignition systems, hospital equipment, pacemakers, communications systems, and electrical appliances. Road and rail signaling, industrial control applications, and other electronic systems are all susceptible to EMP.

Electromagnetic energy on a radio frequency will travel through any conductive matter it comes into contact with—from electrical wires to telephone wires, and even water mains—which can spread the effects to regions outside ground zero.

If an EMP is detonated in orbit, there is a strong potential for substantial damage to U.S. and other satellites as well as any spacecraft in use at the time of the explosion. The military applications of such satellites are critical for defense systems that rely on GPS guidance, such as ballistic missiles and many conventional military strike weapons.

The adverse impact on U.S. space-based communications, early-warning assets, fire control systems, overhead sensors and imagery, and geospatial intelligence would be substantial as well.

The Pearl Harbor analogy is apt here since, under such conditions, potential U.S. adversaries might perceive a clear window of opportunity to pursue their geopolitical ambitions while the United States recovered from such devastation.

Although the altitude necessary for an effective nuclear-based EMP minimizes the likely damage from the nuclear thermal blast and radiation, large numbers of casualties could still occur from the sheer loss of power. Airplanes could fall from the sky, vehicles could stop functioning, and water, sewer, and electrical networks could all fail. Food would rot, health care would suffer, and transportation would become almost non-existent.

The United States and other highly developed nations are especially vulnerable to such attacks given their dependence on extensive transportation networks and other electricity-dependent infrastructures. This insecurity is illustrated by the fact that the average U.S. city only has three days’ worth of food and healthcare provisions.

The August 2003 Northeast Blackout that affected Ohio, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and parts of Canada demonstrates the potential effects of a wide-area EMP attack. During that incident, over 200 power plants, including several nuclear power plants, were shut down as a result of the electricity cutoff. Loss of water pressure led the local authorities to advise affected communities to boil water before drinking it due to contamination from the failure of sewage systems and other health threats. Many backup generators proved unable to manage the crisis. The initial day of the blackout saw massive traffic jams and gridlock when people tried to get home without traffic lights.

Additional transportation problems arose when railways, airlines, gas stations, and oil refineries also halted operations. Telephone lines were overwhelmed due to the high volume of calls, while many radio and television stations went off-air. Overall, the blackout’s economic cost was between $7 and $10 billion due to food spoilage, lost production, overtime wages, and other related costs inflicted on over one seventh of the U.S. population.

Potential Attackers

Although both Russia and China have the technology to launch EMP attacks, the most plausible attackers against the United States would be those potential U.S. adversaries less dependent on modern technologies and electronics, including both rogue states like Iran and North Korea and stateless terrorist groups.

For these actors, an EMP provides a potential method to attack the United States through asymmetric means. With an EMP, they could circumvent America’s superior conventional military power while being less vulnerable to retaliation in kind.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is developing ballistic missiles that could potentially carry an EMP warhead. If Iran were to develop such a warhead, its existing missile arsenal would allow Tehran to conduct an EMP attack against Israel, U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, or other neighboring countries.

If under attack or threatened with military action, the Iranian military could also attempt to detonate a nuclear weapon above U.S. warships and other military forces or defense facilities in an attempt to disable their electronics. For over a decade, the Iranian military has rehearsed launching Scud missiles from ships. Some analysts fear that these exercises aim to give the Iranian military the capacity to attack the United States or other potential adversaries with an EMP weapon.

For over a decade, the People’s Democratic of Korea (DPRK) has sought to develop a nuclear warhead as well as a panoply of ballistic missiles, including systems capable of hitting targets in North America. Some analysts fear that Pyongyang might use these assets to attempt an EMP attack against the continental United States.

Although the reliability of North Korea’s longer-range missiles remains uncertain, as does their capacity to carry nuclear warheads, the DPRK military detonated a small nuclear device in October 2006. It has also already perfected the capacity to strike targets in Japan or South Korea with ballistic missiles.

Due to their less sophisticated electronics, DPRK military equipment is less vulnerable to the effects of a nuclear detonation over the Korean Peninsula than South Korean or U.S. forces. Pyongyang has reneged on its commitment to relinquish its existing stock of nuclear weapons in the Six Party Talks aimed at achieving the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The North Koreans also have a long record of seeking to sell ballistic missile and nuclear weapons technology to other states of proliferation concern.

A successful EMP strike could prevent the U.S. armed forces from organizing a coherent retaliatory strike for some time. Under these conditions, Iranian and DPRK leaders could threaten follow-on attacks unless the United States, its allies, or other targets made major concessions.

Iran and North Korea might also be able to attack U.S. territory directly by launching missiles from a ship located in international waters near the United States. If the attackers scuttled the ship soon after launch, the United States, with many of its intelligence assets blinded, might not be able to identify the perpetrator.

Russian Air Power on Display: The Return of the MiG

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08/27/2011
The Mig-35 is a core revival platform for the company (Credit: http://toad-design.com/migalley/index.php/jet-aircraft/mig35/)

By Dr. Richard Weitz

08/27/2011 – Until a few years ago, the Russian military aviation sector, like many other Russian defense firms, simply struggled to keep Soviet-era weapons platforms operational through upgrades of their computers or ordinance. The Russian military-industrial complex rarely produced any new sophisticated weapons systems. When it did, it would most often manufacture a few prototypes, but then resource constraints would prevent their mass production. Trying to modernize old airplanes, tanks and missiles that were designed in the 1970s and 1980s proved more costly and ineffective than anticipated.

The bankrupt Russian government forced its Ministry of Defense (MoD) to live off the massive weapons inventories Russia inherited from the Soviet Union. Many Soviet-era weapons designers and manufactures went bankrupt, while others gave up on the defense sector.

Those that remained were able to survive only through aggressive foreign sales campaigns. These resulted in record sales to India and China, which during the last few decades of the Soviet Union was not permitted to buy any Soviet weapons legally. During the 1990s, China, India, and other countries were able to buy more sophisticated aircraft than the Russian Air Force from Russian defense firms.

According to the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST), which arranged for me to meet senior Russian MoD and defense industry executives when I was in Russia this spring, Russia exported more than 450 Su-27/30 and almost 200 MiG-29 fighter jets from 1999 to 2010, at a time when the MoD could afford to buy only a handful of warplanes from Sukhoi and MiG.

Sales to foreign air forces still account for about a half of Russia’s annual arms sales, which amounted to $8.35 billion in 2008.  Exports of Sukhoi’s planes account for about half of these sales, or one-quarter of the annual total.

There was a slight rebound in state orders during the mid-2000s, but then the global financial crisis of 2008 again sent the industry into a tailspin. That year, the authorities had to adopt additional emergency support measures for Russian defense companies as part of a crisis-response package that had already seen the government support the troubled military-industrial complex with low-rate loans, flexible contract terms, and quick cash infusions.

The Mig-35 is a core revival platform for the company (Credit: http://toad-design.com/migalley/index.php/jet-aircraft/mig35/)The Mig-35 is a core revival platform for the company (Credit: http://toad-design.com/migalley/index.php/jet-aircraft/mig35/)

Russian officials now provided the military industrial sector with a subsidized 100 billion ruble guaranteed state bank loan, authorized multi-year contracts that enable companies to purchase raw materials and other inputs at opportune times on world markets, and gave 50 billion rubles directly to struggling defense firms.

Much of the alarm focused on the MiG Corporation, the venerable but then ailing manufacturer of Russia’s world-famous fighter aircraft. The company lost some 11 billion rubles in 2008, and had a debt of about 45 billion rubles ($1.25 billion), mostly to its chief suppliers. It had fallen into a distinctly inferior position compared with its traditional rival, the Sukhoi Corporation, whose fighters have become Russia’s most valuable export item.

Sukhoi’s bid defeated MiG’s entry a few years ago for the highly coveted contract to produce Russia’s fifth-generation fighter.

The MiG Corporation’s international reputation has also suffered from persistent problems, especially in the area of after-sales services such as the timely provision of spare parts and repairs.  Although MiG planes, like those of other Russian defense firms, typically carry cheaper sticker prices than comparable Western models, potential buyers must factor into their decisions these probable higher operating costs and lower reliability.

On February 11, 2009, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov visited MiG’s Moscow headquarters and announced that the government would allocate 15 billion rubles ($417 million) to the corporation to allow it to increase its charter capital by issuing additional shares. The Russian government also front-loaded state orders to the corporation, giving MiG 11 billion rubles ($308 million) in the first quarter of 2009 as part of its 17.3 billion-ruble ($485 million) state defense contract for the year.

In another move to support for the MiG Corporation, the MoD agreed to buy 24 MiG-29s that the Algerian government, in an unprecedented decision, refused to accept due to alleged quality control problems. The Ministry offered to pay 25 billion rubles ($690 million) for the two dozen MiG fighters.  In March 2006, Russia’s state arms export monopoly Rosoboronexport signed a $1.28 billion contract to deliver 28 one-seat MiG-29SMT fighters and six two-seat MiG-29UB combat trainers to Algeria as part of an $8 billion military cooperation agreement. After obtaining 15 of the planes, the Algerian government, in May 2007, declined to receive further deliveries. In October 2007, Algiers froze all payments to Russia until Moscow consented to take back the planes, which Russia did in April 2008.

Although Russian authorities claimed that the planes were in good condition, the December 2008 crash of a MiG-29 in East Siberia, the second such mishap in two months, forced Defense Ministry sources to acknowledge that most of Russia’s own fleet of 281 MiG-29 Fulcrum fighters, acquired between 1983 and 1993, could no longer perform combat duties due to obsolescence and age.

The Ministry permitted only some 30% of the MiG-29s, which are now only manufactured to export from assembly kits inherited from the Soviet Union, to resume operations following their month-long suspension.

Rather than try to overhaul its MiG-29 fleet, the Russian Air Force decided to gamble on obtaining a superior fifth-generation plane with stealth technologies, supersonic cruising speed, and other advanced features then available only in the Lockheed Martin/Boeing F-22 Raptor.

In October 2007, Sukhoi Corporation, which had been seeking a foreign partner for five years, and India’s Hindustan Aeronautics Limited signed an intergovernmental agreement for the joint development and production of the so-called T-50 PAK FA Advanced Frontline Aviation Aircraft System: a single-seat variant for the Russian Air Force and a two-seat version for India’s.

In addition to a revival of government purchases, the Russian aviation sector appears to have benefitted from the decision to consolidate its remaining design bureaus and manufacturing plants and production units, many of which were privatized in the 1990s, into a single state holding company, the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC). The UAC includes MiG, Sukhoi, and Russia’s leading civilian aircraft manufacturers. It received extensive government subsidies and assistance with rescheduling its loans until its recent upsurge in orders.

The consolidation may have enabled MiG to more easily draw insights from Sukhoi’s superior performance. It also may have helped decrease the time required to transition a prototype from the R&D stage to production as well as enhanced oversight of subcontractors, though both issues still remain a problem.

Under the UAC’s tutelage, MiG Corporation is now manufacturing a lightweight, low-cost but sophisticated fighter, the MiG-35. It is a “4++ generation” plane that incorporates some fifth-generation technology. It has an active phased-array Zhuk A radar (Zhuk AE in exports) unit and vectored-thrust engines.  Since the Russian Air Forces has yet to commit to acquire a new light-weight fighter, the MiG-35 is designed primarily for export.

The UAC displayed the MiG-35 at MAKS 2011 to several potential buyers. Although the plane was down-selected early in the competition for India’s medium multi-role combat aircraft, the UAC hopes especially to sell this updated version of the MiG-29M to potential customers in Asia and Africa whose air forces already have the MiG-29M or its earlier variants. A twin-seat variant, the MiG-35D, should also soon be available.

According to UAC, the MiG-35 has more reliable airframes, engines and avionics than the MiG-29M, which will lengthen its service and reduce its average flight-hour costs by increasing the mean time between engine overhauls. The plane now has Klimov RD-33MK engines, a new Optical Locator System, and the Phazotron Zhuk-AE active electronically scanned array radar.

Its superior defensive systems include radio electronic reconnaissance and electronic counter measures, optronic systems for detecting incoming missiles, and decoy dispensers to confuse adversary radar systems.

Its open architecture makes it easier to install new equipment and weapons, including non-Russian made systems.

UAC and Russian Air Force leaders claim that the MiG-35 is a potential competitor to Lockheed Martin’s F-35 since the MiG-35 is projected to cost less and meet the needs of many foreign air forces that have purchased Soviet planes in the past.

The Closing of the Avondale Shipyard: More than just a bottom-line decision…

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08/23/2011

By Vince Martinez

08/23/2011 – As the shipbuilding industry prepares for an uncertain future, the looming closure of the Avondale Shipyard near New Orleans expected sometime in 2013 is a clear reminder of the impacts of the downturned economy and a future of fiscal uncertainty.

Such corporate decisions are the direct result of a minimized demand for ship construction, and outlines a strategy on the industry side to consolidate their production capacity to better answer the demand signals coming from the Department of Defense (DoD).

Employees of Northrop Grumman gather outside of Quick Stop at the end of their shift on Wednesday, July 14, 2010. Co-owner Tauy Nguyen said her store has been there for about 18 years and said she will close if Northrop Grumman closes. She said about 100 percent of her business comes from people who work at the plant. (Credit: http://photos.nola.com/tpphotos/2010/07/avondale_shipyard_closing_in_2_5.html)
Employees of Northrop Grumman gather outside of Quick Stop at the end of their shift on Wednesday, July 14, 2010. Co-owner Tauy Nguyen said her store has been there for about 18 years and said she will close if Northrop Grumman closes. She said about 100 percent of her business comes from people who work at the plant.

Credit: http://photos.nola.com/tpphotos/2010/07/avondale_shipyard_closing_in_2_5.html

Anyone who has been paying attention to the economic challenges the state of Louisiana is facing — especially after Katrina and the after affects of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico — knows full well that the last thing that region needs is an exponential loss of jobs that are the direct result of an overall reduction in shipbuilding demand.

Though the impacts on the regional economy surrounding Avondale are obvious and unfortunate, what is more troubling is the fact that the U.S. seems to be content with losing its flexibility in terms of overall shipbuilding infrastructure.  Much like we have seen in the aviation industry following the a dramatic downturn in production starting as early as the close of World War II, this is a troubling sign that the shipbuilding industry is following the same pattern of being reduced to a handful of vendors that are capable of designing, producing and fielding the ships needed to maintain our national security.

What DoD and Congress have to collectively acknowledge, however, is that once those companies, sites and jobs disappear — along with the years of expertise and experience associated with them — vendor choice dries up significantly, and affordable, viable competition for building ships will likely never return without an exponential higher cost and the associated programmatic risk.  You don’t have to look at this from the strategic level, however, to understand the impacts of this decision on the future posture of the nation’s shipbuilding industry.

Case in point: A colleague was down in New Orleans recently and stopped by a local casino to play a few hands.  He ended up in a discussion with a card dealer who was once a welder at the Avondale shipyard who had ultimately lost his job.  While you have to applaud the former welder’s drive to support his family, you don’t have to be a shipbuilder to note that the skill set for both jobs are completely different.

In the conversation, the former welder also voiced his frustration with the uncertainty of the shipbuilding industry in the region.  It is likely that type of uncertainty will keep him, and others who have migrated away from the shipyard, from walking away from new and likely more stable roots if given the opportunity.

It also illustrates that once this type of expertise walks away, it will be exponentially harder to attract them back into the fold without placing themselves or their families at significant risk.

Additionally — and what is often lost on many — once you lose those experts and the jobs that feed them, you also lose the training ground for developing the next generation of shipbuilders — much of which has been largely responsible for the economic stability of that region.

The Navy says that the 700-foot amphibious transport vessels built at Avondale Shipyard by Northrop Grumman are getting more reliable. (Credit: http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/03/avondale_shipyard_vessels_gett.html)The Navy says that the 700-foot amphibious transport vessels built at Avondale Shipyard by Northrop Grumman are getting more reliable. (Credit: http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/03/avondale_shipyard_vessels_gett.html)

The most unfortunate part about this particular exchange, however, is that it appears that the former shipyard subject matter expert seems to think that gambling is far more stable than shipbuilding is in New Orleans these days — and you can’t really blame him for coming to that conclusion.

While it may be easy to justify cutting shipbuilding costs as a result of an often detached, cubical-based budget drill in Washington, D.C., it is up to Congress and the senior leadership within the Department of Defense to truly assess the overall strategic impact of closing a shipyard like Avondale.  And you can only do that by understanding the strategic impacts of this industry side decision and the drivers behind it, by walking the shipyards themselves and knowing the ground, and truly understanding their constituents and their role in preserving our national security.

Years from now, when looking back on this tumultuous time, we will likely reflect on many of the near term decisions and their impacts that were blindly made on the virtues of a budget spreadsheet.

Through the clarity of hindsight, however, we will also know that we should have considered the overall industrial impacts far more closely than we actually did.

What we do know, however, is that we don’t have to wait on assembling lessons from the past — we already know what will happen based on what we have seen on the aviation side of the fence.  With the right leadership, we can move aggressively toward preventing this precipitous drop in strategic production capacity, and set the stage for sustaining our martial advantage now and in the future.

This type of vision and initiative, however, has to start from the top.  This is less about the type and class of a given warship and near term production impacts, and more about preserving and maintaining the overall strength and flexibility of our military industrial complex.

As many of the service level advocates and industry leaders already know, you can’t sustain and win a fight if you are unable to survive the first contact.  Industry is moving to survive by consolidating and relocating its strategic production capacity to better survive the future.  Service level advocates are trying their best to maintain their operational capabilities while simultaneously managing their service level posture amid large-scale budget reductions.

It has to be the civilian leadership in this country, however, that recognizes the impact associated with the loss of a key piece of the shipbuilding infrastructure like the Avondale Shipyard — not the services themselves.  Service advocates are busy enough trying to maintain their own operational posture amid the turmoil.

Leaders also have to avoid assessing the loss of this strategic production capacity as simply an industry side adjustment to preserve the bottom line.

Rather, the civilian leadership has to be aware enough to know that it is high time to do what we need to do to ensure we maintain our national security posture through preservation of the industrial base, and by protecting and maintaining the overall flexibility and capacity of the shipbuilding enterprise.

We must also collectively remember that it is the shipyards like Avondale that are key to maintaining the innovational, technical and production advantage for the country as a whole — especially during these pitched and bitter times in history that are almost solely defined by fiscal constraint and lack of an economic let alone strategic vision.

Russian Air Power on Display: The T-50

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08/20/2011

08/20/2011: Russian Air Power on Display: The T-50

By Richard Weitz

[slidepress gallery=’russian-air-power-on-display’]

Photo Credit:  RussianPlanes.net

Russia’s International Aviation & Space Salon (MAKS-2011) air show, which is being held at Zhukovsky airfield outside Moscow from August 16-21, will not soon rival Paris, but the event, along with the Russian public commentary about it, has revealed a lot about the plans of the Russian aviation industry and the Russian Air Force.

This show saw the first public displays of post-Soviet Russian-made aircraft, signifying Russia’s return to the league of leading Russian aviation companies. An estimated 600,000 visitors will atten the five-day biennial show, at which more than 600 companies will be represented, including more than 150 foreign firms.This column will cover the first public display of the Sukhoi T-50 fighter, Russia’s new fifth-generation warplane.

My next column will address the information that has come out recently, at the show and elsewhere, about Russia’s other air systems.

The T-50 is the first Russian warplane entirely designed and built in Russia since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. It is also Russia’s first declared fifth-generation multi-role fighter/attack plane. It is formally known as the Advanced Front-Line Aviation Complex (PAK FA), [(Russian: Перспективный Авиационный Комплекс Фронтовой Авиации, Perspektivnyi Aviatsionnyi Kompleks Frontovoi Aviatsy, literally “Prospective (Promising) Aircraft Complex (System) of Front line Aviation”].

It is manufactured by the state-owned OAO Sukhoi aircraft corporation, at Авиационного производственного объединения в Комсомольске-на-Амуре (КНААПО), a plant located at Komsomolsk-on-Amur in the Russian Far East, where its maiden flight occurred in January 2010. The first prototype has since carried out more than 40 test flights. Two more prototypes are at various stages of testing.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin joined other senior Russian officials and military officers and the many other attendees to view two T-50 prototypes perform aerobatic maneuvers during their 15-minute demonstration flight — though rather than being subsequently displayed on the ground they were quickly removed to keep their secrets concealed.

Although the definition of a “fifth-generation” fighter is imprecise, it is generally agreed to have stealth (low-observable) characteristics, making the aircraft almost invisible to conventional radar. These include extensive use of composite materials, reduced engine heat signatures, internal weapons carriage, and other advanced technologies that minimize the aircraft’s optical, infrared, and radio-frequency visibility. Furthermore, they can fly at sustained supersonic speeds (“supercruise”) of over 2,000 km/h, a speed other planes can only attain, if at all, for a limited time only by using afterburners.

In addition, fifth-generation warplanes possess advanced weapons, avionics, and navigation control systems that use state-of-the-art technology, such as artificial intelligence, to achieve enhanced maneuverability and network centric warfare capabilities.The single-piloted, twin-engine Sukhoi PAK FA is intended to replace the Russian Air Force’s aging fleet of MiG-29 Fulcrums and Su-27 Flankers. It will serve along with the 48 Su-35s multi-role fighters the Air Force is also procuring from Sukhoi. The Su-35 is considered a “four++” generation plane, with only some fifth-generation capabilities.  The Russian Air Force plans to backload some of the new technologies developed for theT-50, especially the AESA Radar, as mid-life upgrades onto its existing fleet of Su-35BMs, Su-30MKIs, and Su-30MK2s.

According to Sukhoi, the PAK FA has a new advanced avionics suite, sophisticated phased-array radar, more automatic controls, and a very low radar cross-section.  The new all-weather plane will be equipped with new high-precision air-to-air, air-to-surface and air-to-ship missiles and two 30 mm cannons in order to allow it to function in multiple roles, including dog fighting other planes and striking multiple ground and maritime targets simultaneously.  In developing and manufacturing the PAK FA, Sukhoi has functioned as a systems integrator for more than a hundred suppliers and strategic partners.

Before its maiden test flight, Russian sources had given few details about the capabilities and design specifications of the PAK FA. No foreign reporters or military attaches were invited to the initial test flights.  After the test proved a success, the Russian media provided extensive coverage of the flight by releasing its first public photographs and videos of the new plane.  Russian defense industry representatives cited the development as demonstrating that the country’s military industrial complex had recovered from the period of post-Soviet collapse.

The repeated unsuccessful tests of the submarine-launched Buklava intercontinental missile, the problems refurbishing the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov for the Indian navy, the decision of the Russian military to buy unmanned aerial vehicles from Israel rather than the inferior models offered by Russian suppliers, and other embarrassing failures have led many in Russia and elsewhere to doubt the complex’s recovery.

Russian aircraft makers have been seeking to manufacture a fifth-generation warplane since the 1980s.India is a major partner in this $10 billion program. The joint project, India’s largest, will produce derivatives for both air forces. The version for the Indian Air Force will have two seats. The participation of the Indian side in the project is expected to increase over time.  India will contribute about 30 percent of the total project design, including composite components with the stealth function and some avionics, cockpit displays, and electronic warfare systems.  The Indian government signed a preliminary agreement in October 2007 to collaborate with Russia in developing and manufacturing a 5th-generation fighter.

The Russian Air Force will begin testing the mass production version in 2013.  Serial production of the new plane is still scheduled to commence in 2015.   After its first test flight, Mikhail Pogosyan, General Director of the JSC Sukhoi Design Bureau and, since January 31 of this year, General Director of United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), said that the Russian and Indian Air Forces would receive the first planes, but hoped that other countries that are already flying Sukoi and MiG aircraft.  The Russian Air Force aims to purchase at least 20 new T-50 each year after 2015 and eventually buy half of all the planes that are produced.

When I had dinner with Pogosyan in May in Moscow, he indicated Sukhoi/UAC planned to market the plane globally. He even expressed hope that perhaps some North American clients would appear after he declined my suggestion (made in gest, obviously) that perhaps he could instead serve as a paid consultant to Lockheed to help revitalize the F-35 program and ensure that UAC had some international competition for the high-end fighter market.

China, which is seeking to develop its own fifth-generation warplanes, would probably like to buy a few PAK FA planes so that it can study and copy their technologies. Sukhoi and the Russian government probably would not risk such a sale given Chinese demonstrated Chinese prowess in reverse-engineering Soviet-era weapons systems and then selling modified, lower-cost versions to potential Russian customers in other countries.

The manufacturers of the F-22 and F-35 will probably have mixed emotions about the advent of the new Russian plane. On the one hand, it could increase U.S. sales of the more advanced F-22, which Congress has banned from export due to its advanced capabilities. The Defense Department has stopped purchasing more of these air superiority fighter, citing is high cost and the absence of a competitor to the 187 planes already on order despite arguments that the plane is needed to evade increasingly sophisticated surface-to-air missiles.

On the other hand, the Sukhoi PAK FA series could compete with foreign sales of the F-35 since it may cost less (the target is less than $100 million per plane but with full up production the F-35 will be significantly below that number) and has a longer declared range (more than 5,000 kilometers).It is still unclear if the Sukhoi can outperform the F/A-22 in a one-on-one dogfight. It should be noted however that the entire purpose of the systems on the US fifth generation aircraft is to obviate the need for the classic dogfight.

Sukhoi has not been able to integrate supercruise engines or LPI radar into its tests flights. The degree of stealth in the T-50 is also uncertain. The T-50 prototypes are presently equipped with modified fourth-generation A-31FN engines built by the Saturn Corporation. These are more visible in the infrared range than desirable in fifth-generation plane.

The F-22 and F-35 hide their weapons inside their bodies and wings to avoid radar detection, but it was unclear how well the T-5s can do this since the fly-by prototypes were unarmed. Pogosyan said that, “The stealth fighter is progressing as planned and the new engine for the plane will be ready in time.”In any case, increased Russian military spending combined with the decision to export the plane widely will reduce the plane’s production costs and ultimately bring down the fly-away cost per airplane for the Russian Air Force. Combined with cut backs in the number of U.S. combat aircraft to be procured in recent U.S. defense budgets, the eventual number of T-50 variants in the world’s air forces could well exceed the current U.S. fleet of 187 F/A-22 Raptors.

(Note: How integrated or not these combat systems remains a key discriminator among the new planes as weapons systems.  The F-35 remains unique in terms of the nature of its overall integrated combat systems.

https://www.sldinfo.com/the-f-35-mission-systems-a-game-changer-viewed-from-pax-river/

https://www.sldinfo.com/shaping-the-f-35-combat-system-enterprise/

And the quality of the radars is another issue as Northern Edge 2011 reminds us as the intersection between F-35 radars and the rest defined a significant generational difference the Russians have yet to demonstrate.

http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123261835

The emergence of foreign fifth generation systems does highlight the need to fully integrate the new US planes into a honeycomb operations https://www.sldinfo.com/fifth-generation-aircraft-and-3-dimensional-warfare/.

As Ed Timperlake as warned us the tactical aircraft competition is highly interactive

https://www.sldinfo.com/download-pdf-the-us-vs-ussr-in-tacair-lessons-learned-from-a-hot-cold-war/

And Ed Timperlake introduces the z axis to explain the differences among combat aircraft

https://www.sldinfo.com/21st-century-agility-leveraging-the-f-35b-as-a-strategic-asset/).

A Roundtable at the 21st EMTF: Lessons Learned

Posted on | by SysAdmin

08/20/2011 – The final event at the Second Line of Defense visit to McGuire AFB and the 21st Expeditionary Mobility Task Force was a roundtable with several of the players in executing the missions of the EMTF.

Building Partnership

Lt. Col. A: Our squadron was just set up on the 18th of April. We’re just over three months old now.  We’re charged with going out and building partnerships.

The development of this squadron provides AFRICOM with dedicated teams of knowledgeable, expeditionary air mobility air advisers to focus on partnership building objectives.

These teams enhance AFRICOM and Air Forces Africa’s missions by enhancing cultural understanding; conducting sustained engagement with partner nations in order to build and strengthen long-term partnerships; and providing continuity and familiarization with the history, culture and languages of partner nations. Ultimately, this team will enhance Air Forces Africa’s ability to advise, assist and integrate partner forces.

As you’re well aware, air mobility is basically a system of systems.  It’s not just about launching aircraft; it’s not just about control on a runway.

SLD: No, it’s a core competence.

Lt. Col. A: It’s all of it.

The 818th Mobility Support Advisory Squadron was set up to provide air mobility advisory and assistance in support of the Air Force’s goal of building partner capacity. It is one of only two such squadrons of airmobility-dedicated air advisors in the U.S. Air Force and was the first unit of this type created within Air Mobility Command.

Once fully operational, the squadron will support combatant commanders and provide long-term continuity with our partner nations. The missions will typically be specific in scope and short in duration, but overtime build long-term partnership cooperation, interoperability and support.

SLD: Within a case, who are your working partners? I would assume they are the air power professionals in the given country?

Lt. Col. A: Yes, sir.

SLD: Okay.  So, the whole goal here is to work with counterparts to enhance their capability, and hopefully as we do that, they understand that we can work with them in situations that matter.  Is that your basic thought?

Lt. Col. A: Yes, sir.  We’re building from the ground up so it’s one of those things that I’m sure we’ll work and develop as we go along. The 818th Mobility Support Advisory Squadron was established in April and is not expected to reach Initial Operational Capability until December 2011 and Full Operational Capability is not expected until December 2012. Currently, ours is still developing their official concept of operations and does not have any official mission taskings.

However, we will participate as observers in a variety of Air Forces Africa engagements throughout the continent.  Specific engagements or participation timelines will be chosen to give the team opportunities to observe and understand the operating environment and develop appropriate operational procedures. This familiarization will also give us ample time to study the history, culture, needs and languages of partner nations so the educational efforts will have the greatest chance of success. Once fully operational, the 818th will be able to conduct assigned missions throughout Africa in order to build partner capacity in support of U.S. and AFRICOM objectives.

Supporting Afghan Surge Operations

Captain C described how the CRW supported surge operations in Afghanistan.  The basic role of the CRW team was to go to Afghanistan and augment a key NATO airbase and to support the delivery of equipment to the troops for operations. They worked at Mazar-e-Sharif which includes Camp Marmal, home to the German-led Regional Command – North, NATO International Security Assistance Force, composed of German, Croatian, Hungarian, and Norwegian forces. The military airfield in Mazar-e-Sharif is used by the U.S. military to airlift critical cargo such as mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles to the northern Afghanistan region.

Capt. C: We deployed to Mazar-e-Sharif with about 60-70 people.  We were deployed outside of the wire of the main NATO airfield. We actually had to leave the base every day and go around the flight line. And where we worked, we were building up that portion of it.  That was actually the Afghan airport side, which we worked right next to them.

We supported C-5Ms coming into the augmented base to unload and deploy equipment for operations. This was only the second deployment of C5-Ms.  The C-5s have had some serious reliability issues, but the C-5M is a different animal.

We had maintainers that were solely based just with the C5Ms.  We had brought our own guys who are quick maintenance — that’s what we do.  But they had actually a whole contingent of C5M maintainers, back shop flight line guys, but we didn’t use them in that capacity, because the jets flew very well.

And the C5-Ms were bringing in helos for the 4th Air Cavalry brigade and M-ATVs for the forward deployed brigade.

SLD: How long were you there?

Capt. C: It was a 60-day mission. And everything went well.  We also handed off that portion of the mission to the NATO forces towards the end of our stay.  We had a couple of the Americans that came into backfill us so we handed off the mission to them, so they did the same portion of what we were doing, but they were doing it on the NATO side.

When we picked up and left our mission, the outside-the-wire portion was gone.  And the NATO picked it up from their side.

As they were building up their area of the ramp, being able to support the increased cargo loads, we basically worked with them every day until they felt like they were ready to take it over.  And that was all said and done and it worked out with the time.  It was perfect.  Their side of the ramp opened up, and they had a cargo yard and their maintenance was working out of there.

Providing a deployable TACC for the force

Lt. Col. Beth L focused on the role of the team in providing mobile support for the CAOC in theater.  The role of the team is to provide support for the overall TACC mission but within a theater of operations.

Lt. Col. L: I’m a flight nurse by trade.  Outside, you already saw the shelters, our three-in-one shelters, which we have six of. Part of the AMOS includes our shelters.  Then, we have the base, the deployable coms, which you saw outside already.

And then, we have the air mobility division, which is a deployable TACC, which is the simplest term to describe our activity.

We have air medical evacuation, airlift, and aerial refueling support activities.  And then, along with that there are the three components.  We have maintainers, logistics, Intel, and command and control support elements.

We’re a deployable TACC, so we have standing deployments with the CAOC. And we provide the intra-theater lift and intra-theater aero-medial evacuation support.

In Haiti, we had folks command and control along with our deployable COM that went to Haiti.  We had folks at SOUTHCOM to provide support as well. And then, we had folks that were at NORTHCOM at Tyndall AFB doing all air mobility operations.

Haiti Operations

Lt Col. K and Master Sgt. B discussed the role of the CRW in the Haiti operation.

We went down to Haiti, about 60 hours or so after the earthquake happened.  Our job, our mission was a JTFP, which is joint taskforce port opening.  And so, the big picture, what we did, we went down, we opened up the airfield, we allowed aircraft to land, and once they landed, we download them, and put their cargo into a forward node, or into a cargo yard and then a forward node.

The joint part of that mission was that we do team an ARPO unit out of Fort Eustis.  And their job is essentially to take that cargo to a forward node and then we distributed out to the country.

Once we were down there, while we were doing the airfield ops, secure the airfield, work for the Haitian people.  We had daily contact with the state department, U.S. aid, and other militaries, foreign and commercial on a daily basis.

Air Mobility Liaison

Major Tim F discussed the role of the air mobility liaison officer in shaping mission success.

Their task is to learn to speak Army and USMC language to support effectively joint operations.

The 621st provides AMLOs to Army and Marine Corps units with airborne or heavy airlift deployment requirements. Embedded within the joint unit, the AMLO is the primary advisor to the supported commander on air mobility issues. While behind a desk, they are the go-between for the Army and Air Force. They arrange air transportation of Army assets to include supplies and personnel.  In the field, they do everything from familiarizing Soldiers with drop-zone surveys to fielding airdrops in some of the most hostile locations.

Their mission is diverse, and it really is largely dependent on the type of unit you’re supporting.  I can tell you working with a light infantry paratrooper is completely different than working with a heavy unit on the West Coast or even the Marines.

From my perspective, it was really about learning the Army culture.  For example, AMLOs learn to speak Army to the Air Force and speak Air Force to the Army.  And I can tell you as a C-130 instructor pilot that culture is very different.

The TACC Tasking Process and Execution

Master Sergeant S discussed the tasking process from TACC and how it gets executed on the ground.

Msgt. S: I work up in the wing operations office with eight other personnel.  While we don’t get to go out to the fight, we make sure everybody gets to the fight. Whether it’s doing humanitarian efforts… or if we’re out there helping the Afghanistan surge operations or anything else, anytime, anywhere.   We receive all of the incoming taskings. In a way, we’re like the liaison between TACC and 18th Air Force.

SLD: So you are looking at the infrastructure that has to be put in place to support the operation?

Msgt. S: Yes, sir.  We look at all of our capabilities.  When we receive the execution orders from the 18th Air Force and TACC, and are basically told what type of capability or requirement is being requested out in the field, we look at availability of assets. Whether it’s to support the Haiti earthquake relief, or Japan’s tsunami relief, etc.  We basically look at what we have available and make sure that we can fill all the billets that they need from us to go out into the field.

SLD: So you manage the gap between desires and reality with regard to a deployment?

Msgt. S: We have positions within the wing that are either currently deployed, getting ready to separate from the Air Force or they’re PCSing (Permanent Change of Station), so it’s hard to really fill some of those billets.  And then, we have to communicate that concern with TACC to help coordinate another fill elsewhere.  But most of the time, we’re pretty capable of filling every billet needed.  And we don’t really say no to too many missions; we try to take everything we can get, and get our teams out on the missions.

And nobody here really complains. We like to go out, because that’s what we do. That’s our job to go out there and help everybody else in the world who needs the assistance.  Or get our new fellow brothers out in the field where they need to be, or to bring them home, if that’s the case.

SLD: And I am sure, there is the challenge of matching the right personnel to the current mission.

Msgt. Sowers: That is a challenge.  The right manpower, the right core professional skills that we’re looking at for the mission is the challenge to be met.

Working with Pakistan

Lt. Col. U and Sgt. B discussed the challenges of working in Pakistan and the approaches shaped in partnership with the Pakistanis.

Sgt. B: I served in the Pakistani relief operations last Fall with Lt. Col. Underwood as the pre-commander. We were charged with bringing in the combat aviation brigade from the Army.  We brought their helicopters all being transported from Travis AFB on C5s and C17s.

SLD: Did the Pakistanis raise the cap on US personnel allowed in Pakistan during this operation?

Sgt. B: Yes they did.  We brought 36 people in our part of the operation.

SLD: So your primary effort was to support the insertion of the helos to help with flood relief?

Sgt. B: We did that.  That was our primary mission, and then our secondary mission really was to secure the access points within and throughout the hardest hit regions.  Many roads and bridges were blocked out, and relief teams just couldn’t get to certain areas. We worked to provide access. We used helos and C-130s to work to provide access in areas without road or bridge access.

SLD: And presumably, this is a topography flooded and disrupted, so who’s making the manned decisions on who goes where?

Lt. Col. U: One of the things we got to do there was they kind of take some pages from our building partnership mission that we saw emerging and help them.  In this case, we were able to work with the Pak military, but also, the civilian NDMA, which is the National Disaster Management Authority, which is like our FEMA.

And so, we were able to work with them and show them how to map where the needs were from the roads, from the NGOs, for the world food programs from the USAIDs.

SLD: And your data with regard to the actual situation, where was that coming from?

Lt. Col. U: It was feeding in from a lot of the NGOs that were already in place in the country, especially up in the North.

SLD: So they were giving you information on ground conditions in the flood disaster areas?

Lt. Col. U: Yes. The 26th MEU was providing information as well.  They would go into the South, and they would keep fanning out further every day trying to distribute aid.  They’d find more and more pockets, and they’d bring that information back.

We would consolidate that on our side, and bring that to a daily meeting.

SLD: So how did you put the information together to shape operations?

Lt. Col. U: It pretty much came down to good old grease pencil and maps.  We rolled the maps out on the big table in the conference room. We would show them these roads. We literally were drawing roads, these are still impassable, here are some pockets of people, and we need to move here or there.  We would designate operational sections of the country to each particular unit that might be helping or there’s a 16 CAV unit up in the North, the 26th MEU in the South, and the UN with their helicopters.

And we would try to distribute the aid that we would get to particular nodes.  Do a hub-and-spoke kind of system. We were doing a partnership building with them to shape a joint response to this disaster, and show logistical systems should be flexible and be able to think about the distribution of aid.

SLD: You have talked about logistics and tools to support the mission. You have also discussed the working relationships in country to determine how most effectively operate and support. These joint decision-making structures only come about because we have folks like you that build experience in operations and working with specific partners.  Partnership is a global concept; but the reality is it’s always local.

Lt. Col. U: you hit it, sir.  We delivered elements, whether you call them formal elements or semi-formal elements of our national power to affect a change in Pakistan.  We had economics aid elements by bringing by USAID in. We were able to talk to them, build relationships, whether it was the port commander or I. The freedom we gave them to keep their military focus on things that were good for our security by doing jobs that they would otherwise be called to do was important as well. And clearly I did not do this by myself; it was the 36 guys, besides me over there.

And these partnerships were built upon past efforts as well.

Sgt. B: I was there in 2005 doing the same operation, but that time due to the earthquake.  I’ve been in this fleet six years, and helped with the earthquake in 2005, which that was a lot more devastating compared to the floods.  But basically, it was the same type of operation and worked with many of the same people as before.

Maritime Power and Grand Strategy

Posted on | by SysAdmin | Leave a Comment on Maritime Power and Grand Strategy
08/16/2011

By Dr. Richard Weitz

08/16/2011 – In addition to offering presentations by such U.S. grand strategists as Michael Mandelbaum, Barry Posen, Walter McDougall, John Mueller and SLD’s own David Deptula, the August 4 CNA conference on “American Grand Strategy and Maritime Power” sought to “examine U.S. naval strategy in light of emerging domestic and international conditions, and to discuss the strategic principles that should inform the naval services in the coming decades.”

Can the US build an effective 21st Century maritime strategy? (Credit: Bigstock)
Can the US build an effective 21st Century maritime strategy? (Credit: Bigstock)

An effective grand strategy requires appropriate and adequate tools and resources to carry it out. Sea power is an essential instrument of any effective grand strategy. Despite some difference in emphasis and focus, the speakers—including Hudson’s own Seth Cropsey—generally made the following points about how the U.S. Navy (there was less discussion of the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard) contributes to the realization of U.S, national interests.

For reasons of geography, commerce, and security, the United States must command the seas and ensure the security of global sea lines of communication: 70% of the world’s surface consists of water, 80% of the world’s population lives within a few hundred miles of the oceans, and 90% of U.S. commerce moves on the world’s oceans. Sustaining U.S. military power in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East requires providing supplies and support by sea, including the tactical employment of carrier-based aircraft and the use of amphibious assault forces and naval gunfire support.

The United States depends on the world’s oceans to move people and goods to and from the U.S. homeland. The 2005 U.S. National Strategy for Maritime Security points out that, “The right of vessels to travel freely in international waters, engage in innocent and transit passage, and have access to ports is an essential element of national security. The free, continuing, unthreatened intercourse of nations is an essential global freedom and helps ensure the smooth operation of the world’s economy.”

The U.S. Navy’s global presence ensures U.S. access and freedom of action throughout the world. Forward-deployed U.S. naval forces promote regional stability by deterring potential aggressors-from nation states to pirates–and reassuring allies. Both adversaries and friends constantly notice and measure the flow of highly visible U.S. warships to their neighborhood.

Sea power is unique in its responsiveness, flexibility, and adaptability. Naval expeditionary forces can swiftly respond to crises—including as what are variously defined as “forcible-entry” or “assured-access” operations–without requiring a costly, sizeable, or permanent footprint ashore in advance. They also are not constrained by claims of national sovereignty, no matter how exaggerated. Naval packages, including their Marine component, are modular in nature. Not only can their size be optimized to the situation at hand, but they can be easily moved closer to, or further away from, targets of influence.

The great U.S naval power theorist, Alfred Thayer Mahan, described sea power as “more silent than the clash of arms,” yet as influential as it is quiet. Since World War II, U.S. maritime power has been so benign and effective that many other countries have declined to develop their own navies. U.S. naval superiority has been so overwhelming that it has also dissuaded most potential rivals from even considering a naval challenge.

Interestingly, US "Grand Strategists" ignore the USMC and the USCG in shaping an effective maritime strategy in a constrained budgetary environment. Clearly SLD has not. (Credit: USCG)Interestingly, US “Grand Strategists” ignore the USMC and the USCG in shaping an effective maritime strategy in a constrained budgetary environment.  Clearly SLD has not. (Credit: USCG)

U.S. naval power has foreclosed strategic options for these states. The U.S. Navy has not had even to fight a sea battle since World War II thanks to its uncontested supremacy. U.S. naval supremacy gives the United States an unparalleled asymmetric advantage. Naval forces can achieve strategic, operational, and tactical gains while minimizing U.S. vulnerabilities.

History shows that the world economy needs a dominant naval power to protect global sea lines, fight piracy, and otherwise keep vital sea lanes open for all to use. When naval dominance exists, it is often taken for granted since sea power is not a variable of most economic equations or models.

But the absence of a dominant naval power is clearly noted, since it leads to rising threats to this vital global commons as well as arms races and sometimes wars between existing and emerging naval powers. Through its emphasis on commerce and avoiding large standing armies, sea power also promotes democratic freedoms.

The U.S. Navy is a core member of America’s national security team. Nothing empowers American diplomats more than having a fleet of aircraft carriers capable of showing the flag throughout the world. Sometimes exerting influence requires having military power in the foreground rather than the background.

Naval forces can be deployed and redeployed on the high seas as needed without requiring anyone’s permission. They highlight the benign face of the United States by conveying humanitarian assistance and disaster relief following a crisis. U.S. strategic submarines provide a core element of America’s nuclear deterrent thanks to their ability to remain concealed underwater before possibly launching their long-range nuclear-armed ballistic missiles at distant targets.

As Deptula noted, “Sea control isn’t just accomplished with ships anymore, and air control isn’t carried out just by aircraft. The air and maritime domains are seamlessly interconnected.” Like air power, naval power is essential for the United States to undertake offshore balancing and counter threats to allies through extended deterrence.

Both tools of grand strategy support the core U.S. national security goals of curbing nuclear proliferation, managing emerging near-peer competitors, sustaining strategic alliances, maintaining open access to the global commons and key natural resources, and defending the U.S. homeland.

The American people have lost interest in long-term nation building projects or waging protracted counterinsurgencies. This sentiment, which is unlikely to change son, has made it more important to be able to provide “over-the-horizon” military power to U.S. allies, including new ones like the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, through air and naval power.

The Arab Spring is threatening to deprive the U.S. military of many facilities in the Middle East, requiring a buildup of offshore capabilities. The upheavals in those countries have already led to an upsurge in refugees from North Africa fleeing across the Mediterranean into Southern Europe.

Anticipated global trends in economics, demographics, resources, and climate change will if anything increase the demand for maritime power and influence. The world’s waterways will remain the most efficient means for transporting goods. The world’s poor may be inspired by the success of the Somali pirates and become buccaneers preying on the world’s commercial fleets. The proliferation of ballistic missile arsenals throughout the could well require purchasing many additional missile-defense ships.

And several SLD articles have already underscored the opportunities and challenges that are emerging with the thawing of the Arctic ice. Among other things, this development is making accessible the natural resources under its waters and broadening opportunities for global commerce through northern seas. But this access could be contested, and states will need sea power to enforce their claims.

As other SLD articles have noted, the United States urgently needs to reconstitute its Coast Guard icebreaker fleet. Otherwise, it may need to rely on Russia for this capacity, adding to existing U.S. dependence on Russia for manned space flight vehicles.

Unfortunately, U.S. maritime supremacy is threatened by two developments. First, China and other countries are challenging U.S. dominance through innovative tactics and lavish spending. Second, excessive U.S. budget stringency is undermining the sinews of U.S. naval strength.

Pentagon planners worry that Iran, China, Iran, and other adversaries are developing “asymmetric” capabilities that employ innovative means and tactics to circumvent U.S. maritime dominance. These include “anti-access strategies” designed to hobble the U.S. Navy’s ability to project and sustain combat power in a region and “area-denial strategies” that seek to constrain U.S. maritime freedom of action.

The Peoples’ Republic of China is not neglecting the importance of sea power even if congressional budget cutters might. The Chinese have acquired several of the world’s largest shipping companies. They are also constructing a network of facilities and supporting bases in the Indo-Pacific region—sometimes called a “string of pearls”—to support an expansion of their naval power to that domain. Now the Chinese are developing a fleet of aircraft carriers top project power throughout the world.

One problem with navies is that they are capital-intensive and therefore very expensive. Naval capabilities must be purchased even in peacetime, when their value is typically underappreciated. It takes years to construct modern warships, though they normally remain operational for decades if properly maintained, which also is expensive. Furthermore, sailors require extensive training and support. Yet, the size of the U.S. Navy has been cut in half since the 1980s.

Paying for the Navy is an insurance policy to avert threats to global commerce, avert regional conflicts, and forestall other disasters. And forward deployed naval forces can promote partnerships with local allies and help build their capacity. Through their collective efforts, they can minimize challenges to the international maritime order such as deterring pirates and dissuading potentially hostile states from developing their own navies. Such a cooperative approach to maritime security leverages the investment in the U.S. Navy manifold.

As General Deptula noted, the Navy has joined with the Air Force to develop the Air Sea Battle concept to overcome military threats to adversary anti-access/area-denial strategies through the integrated application of U.S. air and maritime power.

But budget cuts are threatening to deprive the United States of the naval assets it needs to conduct the strategy effectively.  For example, the United States needs more nuclear-powered attack submarines, which provide the U.S. Navy with an asymmetric advantage to counter China’s anti-ship missiles and other anti-access capabilities.

Finally, I am obliged to mention the luncheon keynote address of former Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig since he addressed issues of perennial concern to SLD readers. These include the need for more adaptive defense production processes in order to provide equipment that will remain effective even in a rapidly changing security environment.

Danzig also called for buying more defense products with the expectation that they would have much shorter service lives provided they were replaced sufficiently rapidly. A more rapid and diverse procurement system would allow the United States to emulate the Israelis, who change their defense equipment, technologies, and concepts as rapidly as their potential adversaries change their strategy and tactics.

Pondering American Grand Strategy

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08/13/2011

08/12/2011: Pondering American Grand Strategy

By Richard Weitz

On Thursday, August 4, 2011, CNA convened a one-day unclassified conference on “American Grand Strategy and Maritime Power” at the Army and Navy Club in downtown Washington. This column will address the grand strategy issues that were raised; the next one will discuss the various forms of military power discussed that could help achieve these goals.

The discussions assessed the advantages, costs, risks, and implications of several plausible U.S. grand strategies. They also considered the factors that shape the evolution of U.S. grand strategies and the implications of these strategies for the U.S. military. The speakers told the audience, many of whom were military officers or defense planners, that they must understand these issues to best prepare their services, their units, and themselves for future security challenges and opportunities.

In search of a strategy

Credit: Bigstock

The first speakers set the international context. As the geopolitical landscape changes, U.S. grand strategy must likewise change. In terms of the relative sizes of their economies and populations, longstanding U.S. allies and adversaries—such as Europe, Japan, and Russia—seem to be in decline, while the great Asian continental powers of China and India are rising. Although U.S. strategic thinking in the wake of the Cold War has been temporarily distracted by non-state threats such as terrorism, grand strategy must also address the challenges posed by newly empowered conventional state actors.

American grand strategy, which was focused for half a century on securing Europe and containing Russia, must be reoriented to address the growing challenge of a more powerful and assertive China. Intimately connected with meeting this challenge is courting and engaging an increasingly influential India, whose expanding economy, vast population, and proximity to strategically significant nations to both the east (China) and the west (Afghanistan-Pakistan) increases India’s strategic significance.

Power transitions are rarely peaceful. At the level of the international system, the rise and fall of great powers typically entails major tensions and often major wars.   Rising powers seek to alter international institutions and the rules to their advantage as well as pursue territorial and other concrete goals. They convert some of their growing wealth into power projection and other military capabilities—which they can in turn employ to pursue their foreign commercial goals. The declining great powers will resist these predations on their overseas economic interests and the existing world order of institutions and norms from which they benefit.

Unresolved border disputes, competition for scarce resources, and even status and prestige considerations can easily precipitate an armed conflict. The 16th through 17th centuries saw the transition of international power pass from Spain to England in a series of open military conflicts. Great Britain’s fall from dominance over the course of the 20th century was hastened by the two most devastating wars in history, though the actual handoff of global primacy to the United States occurred relatively peacefully. Likewise the Soviet Union emerged from World War II as a superpower largely by sudden and aggressive territorial grabs toward the end of the conflict.An effective U.S. grand strategy must manage the current power transition. China might use its growing economic and military power to uphold common interests, such as freedom of the seas against pirates, political reconciliation and economic development in the Afghan-Pak region, or nuclear non-proliferation in Iran and the Koreas, but such a benign power transition is rare and certainly cannot be presumed.

Like other scholars, Christopher Layne, Professor and Robert M. Gates Chair in Intelligence and National Security at George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, argued that the world was seeing another great power transition from the United States and its European allies to the rising powers of Asia—India and especially China. Layne explained that we should view this power transition not so much as a result of America’s decline as about the Asian countries’ rise—or rather their restoration to great power status, which several have enjoyed in previous centuries. Insofar as Americans were contributing to their own fall, Layne saw it as due to “termite” decline—the eating away of the foundations of American power through misguided fiscal and other domestic policies—and needlessly extensive foreign military interventions and other manifestations of “imperial overstretch.”


US grand strategy in search of an identity in a challenging world

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As Chinese and Indian economic growth numbers continue to outpace those of the United States and its European allies, Beijing and New Delhi are likely to demand more representation in the key international institutions and exert more power and influence in Asia. How the United States manages these developments will determine in large part the political stability and prosperity of the new international order. The fundamental question is whether this power transition will happen through war, as in the past, or whether the transition can be managed in a way that avoids unnecessary loss of life, time, and resources.Rising powers also tend to apply their growing strength to resolve territorial conflicts in their favor. Beijing’s case is more menacing since so many of its land and sea borders are contested with other states.  China’s excessive claims to sovereignty over the East China Sea are worrying given the conflicting claims and the vital importance for maritime navigation of these sea-lanes. American forces provide strategic deterrence and military security for many East Asian states, like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, among others. Many Asian leaders privately, and some openly, look to Washington to balance a more assertive Chinese foreign policy in the region.

One core element of an effective grand strategy will be working with other Asian powers. American grand strategy must consider how to engage China’s neighbors, many of whom are wary of the PRC’s growing power. Layne argued that a grand strategy of “offshore balancing” would help address the gap between the large-scale U.S. foreign policy ambitions and the scarce U.S. power resources.  Although authors often use the term “off-shore balancing” imprecisely or in different ways, the concept broadly refers to strategic efforts by a major power to check the rise of a rival power by aligning primarily with other regional powers to bar the burden of balancing the rising state.

The obvious advantage of this strategy is that the offshore balancer can exert influence without maintaining a financially costly and diplomatically burdensome strong physical presence in the rival’s region. For example, the related concept of “selective engagement” would entail concentrating U.S. military, diplomatic, and economic resources to protect a few vital interests. In today’s world, this approach would prioritize maintaining control over vital sea lines of communication, preventing a major land war in Eurasia, and augmenting U.S. homeland security. In Layne’s vision of how the United States would apply the concept of offshore balancing to the PRC, Washington would seek to balance China’s rise through strategic ententes rather than military alliances. The United States would use burden shifting, not burden sharing, which contributes to free riding of others on U.S. defense efforts.

Christopher Preble, Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, also stressed what he saw as the recurring failure of U.S. allies to pay enough for their own defense because U.S. grand strategy, which regularly employs military power to guarantee the security of U.S. allies and friends, makes it unnecessary for them to do so.In Layne’s vision, Japan, India, and possibly Russia, all of which have an imminent interest in countering China’s expansion, would serve as the front-line balancers of Beijing.By reducing its direct military role in the region, the United States would induce China’s neighbors to assume a greater self-defense burden. This burden shifting would allow Washington to constrain China’s rise while reducing U.S. defense costs as well as potential concerns of other countries regarding how U.S. hegemony might constrain their own strategic options.

Such regional balancing need not involve only military means. For example, India and especially Russia could work within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to constrain Chinese influence in Central Asia, perhaps supplemented with a more open U.S. engagement with that organization and a U.S. policy more encouraging of expanding Russia’s role in East Asia. U.S. military power would backstop such efforts, though mostly in the background, as with U.S. nuclear weapons today.Layne saw U.S. naval and air power as the optimal tools for this purpose since the United States has strategic advantages in these capabilities. Therefore, the United States would adjust its regional force posture to maintain more of an “over the horizon” presence that focuses on sea power and air power while keeping U.S. ground forces on the Asian mainland to a minimum. Barry Posen, recalling his “Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony,” stressed the need to maintain U.S. command of “the commons,” i.e., the seas, sky, outer space, and the cyber domain.  This primacy gives the United States the ability to strike anywhere very quickly, and very hard, while at the same time allowing allies to benefit from U.S. extended security guarantees.

As long as the United States acts to keep the commons open to all legitimate users, other countries will support this U.S. hegemony because it directly benefits them—they are able to enjoy free use of the commons without having to pay the full burden of upholding it.Unfortunately, analysts at the conference noted that China’s development of ballistic missiles and other anti-access and asymmetric capabilities were threatening to challenge U.S. primacy in the sea and air near China, as well as the cyber and outer space domains more broadly.Michael Mandelbaum, Christian A. Herter Professor and Director of the American Foreign Policy Program at SAIS, stressed the continuing limitations of Chinese power. Although the size of the entire PRC economy was large, its per capita GDP remains low. Referencing Susan Shirk’s book, China: Fragile Superpower, Mandelbaum noted how the PRC also faces major domestic impediments to its rising power, including ethnic tensions, an aging population due to the one-China policy, and restrictions on the Internet and other societal communications and freedoms resulting from the PRC’s authoritarian political system.  Japan provides a recent example of how what many Americans considered an emerging great power challenger to the United States in Asia failed to materialize due to debilitating domestic problems.

In terms of international barriers to China’s rise, PRC leaders fear acting too aggressively might strengthen other states’ incentives to form a countervailing coalition against them. In addition, Mandelbaum and others argued that PRC leaders’ desire to remain in power leads them to avoid actions that could jeopardize their country’s high economic growth—something best achieved in a peaceful Asia without conflicts or other impediments to commerce. According to Mandelbaum, PRC leaders also want to restrain nuclear weapons proliferation since their acquisition by Japan or Taiwan would present a real threat to Beijing’s regional security ambitions. The Chinese Navy would need decades, if ever, to catch up to the U.S. Navy. Until then, the PRC would refrain from directly challenging the U.S. military.

Mandelbaum also identified several characteristics of the present international system that could make the current great power transition more peaceful than previous ones. First, the advent of nuclear weapons made an all-out war between China and the United States unthinkable. Second, empires are out of fashion. Whereas before World War I Germany was igniting conflicts with Britain and France in its quest for overseas colonies and its naval buildup to support its burgeoning overseas empire, the PRC relies on Chinese diplomats and companies, with strong but non-military support from their government, to obtain the raw materials China needs to fuel its expansion. In fact, Beijing depends on the indirect support of the U.S. Navy to preserve the freedom of the seas necessary for China to import vital energy and other foreign goods. The United States must determine how to exploit this period of weakness in China’s expansion. In terms of American diplomacy, common suggestions in the policy literature are to continue to divide and conquer potential adversaries as well as to enhance U.S. alliances with the United Kingdom, Japan and India. These countries are bound together by their shared beliefs in democratic governance and wariness of growing Chinese influence in Asia and abroad.  In some areas, Washington would do better to cooperate with rising powers to manage transnational threats such as terrorism, pathogens, nuclear proliferation, and climate change. In these areas, U.S. policy should promote strategic collaboration among all great powers, whether friendly or not.

The problems with having an ineffective grand strategy is that it can lead to a further decline in U.S. relative power and influence. For example, analysts have faulted U.S. policy makers for not having a grand strategy after 9/11 that balanced ends and means by establishing clear priorities regarding which terrorist groups and nation states represented the greatest threat to the United States and what means should be employed to counter them. Critics of the George W. Bush administration believe it devoted excessive resources to countering terrorism and confronting Iraq, while neglecting to consolidate initial U.S. successes in Afghanistan, reverse deteriorating relations with Russia, and respond to Asian worries about the PRC’s rising power.

The Obama administration has also been faulted for devoting excessive resources to the Afghanistan War when, in contrast to the locally focused Taliban, most of the hard-core transnational terrorists have relocated to other countries, such as Yemen and Somalia, which therefore warrant greater economic and other resources.Today, some analysts worry that the Obama administration and the Congress will cut defense spending excessively, while others fear that they will prove insufficiently bold to make major cuts and thereby induce other countries to assume greater defense responsibilities.Resolving these competing recommendations is impossible without a high-level grand strategy that establishes a hierarchy of essential objectives and then determines what military and non-military means are necessary to achieve them.