Want to End the Korean War? Talk to a Veteran Who Fought In It. Listening to veterans is the best way to learn the lessons of the Korean War and to honor those who served. They remind us both what we lost and what we have gained through the conflict. Time is running out to gain the benefits of their experience and wisdom directly. by Jonathan Corrado

As the world commemorates the 70^th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, the Center for the National Interest’s Korean Studies team decided to ask dozens of the world’s top experts a simple question: Do you believe that the Korean War will finally come to an end before its next major anniversary in 2025? The below piece is an answer to that question. Please click here to see even more perspectives on this important topic.

Although current conditions suggest that an end to the Korean War before 2025 is an unlikely outcome, the seventieth anniversary of the war’s start provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the legacy of the conflict and the lessons it offers. The perspective offered by studying the war’s beginning, expansion, and aftermath provides valuable lessons that help illuminate an informed approach to deterring future conflict and achieving a stable and lasting peace. 

The United States was caught unprepared twice during the Korean War: first during the North Korean invasion, and then again when Chinese forces poured over the Yalu River and entered the conflict. The CIA did issue a prescient warning in June 1949 saying that “Withdrawal of US forces from Korea in spring of 1949 would probably in time be followed by an invasion [...] by the North Korean People's Army possibly assisted by small battle-trained units from Communist Manchuria.” However, most analysts and policymakers in Washington were focused on other regions as potential flashpoints for satellite conflicts with the Soviet Union, including Iran, Greece, Turkey, and Berlin. Just before North Korea invaded in June 1950, the CIA ranked Korea fifth in terms of “explosiveness.”

Although sufficient information was collected to suggest both North Korea’s invasion and China’s subsequent entrance into the war, the quality of the analysis was diluted by presumptions about the adversary. Policymakers over-attributed Moscow’s centrality to the decisionmaking of all Socialist countries and paid not enough consideration to local actors and incentives. Analysts applied mirror imaging, interpreting the interests of the adversary through the prism of their own perspective. In the case of China, recovering from civil war and woefully outmatched by American military muscle, the costs expected of conflict seemed to outweigh potential gains, but a glimpse into Chinese strategic history illustrates that Chinese empires have for centuries spent blood and treasure to intervene on the Korean Peninsula.

The aftermath of the war set conditions for the establishment of an alliance that has credibly deterred conflict for over sixty-five years. This isn’t to say that the U.S.-ROK Alliance hasn’t changed, grown, or adapted over the years. Indeed, the alliance has weathered numerous stressors and evolutions, including major force reductions in 1960, 1971, and 2004, provisional plans for withdrawal under the Carter administration, and substantial reconfigurations of the force presence.

Today, an overwhelming majority of Koreans and Americans continue to support the alliance. The strong foundation of this relationship has proven resilient enough to withstand past pressures and will continue to serve as a bedrock for the road ahead. It is the key to seeking positive improvements on the peninsula, with South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in suggesting that the alliance should remain after denuclearization, a peace treaty, and even unification. A strong alliance creates ideal conditions for lasting diplomatic progress. Gen. Robert B. Abrams, commander of the United Nations Command, Combined Forces Command, and United States Forces Korea, said the joint U.S.-ROK Alliance posture supports “negotiation by permitting our diplomats to speak from a position of unquestioned strength and capability.”

Listening to veterans is the best way to learn the lessons of the Korean War and to honor those who served. They remind us both what we lost and what we have gained through the conflict. Time is running out to gain the benefits of their experience and wisdom directly, but you will still be able to watch Marine veteran and Korean War Veterans area commander Sal Scarlato recount his journey into service and revelation about why the United States joined the fight as well as take advantage of the collection of oral histories from Korean War veterans curated and made available to the public by the Korean War Legacy Foundation.

Is North Korea Really Prepared to End the Korean War? The end of the Korean War and peace on the peninsula are no more likely to occur as the result of a peace agreement than has North Korean denuclearization occurred as the result of multiple denuclearization agreements. Ultimately, North Korean objectives matter, and real peace does not appear to be part of those objectives. by Bruce W. Bennett and Soo Kim

The end of the Korean War and peace on the peninsula are no more likely to occur as the result of a peace agreement than has North Korean denuclearization occurred as the result of multiple denuclearization agreements. Ultimately, North Korean objectives matter, and real peace does not appear to be part of those objectives.

The North Korean regime has been very clear that its two primary objectives are regime survival and Korean unification controlled by the North. The North Korean regime has reason to be worried about its survival, given its many failures in the last several years, to include the difficulties it is apparently facing in just feeding the people of Pyongyang now. The regime seems to perceive that it can overcome its third world, impoverished conditions if it can impose unification on the South, perhaps the only justification for the regime’s building dozens of nuclear weapons.

But first, the North must help decouple the ROK/U.S. alliance. Without U.S. extended deterrence, the South could be vulnerable to North Korean nuclear coercion and attacks. While we seldom consider the Korean War ending with the North’s original objective of victory, Kim Jong-un appears to be hoping to achieve that outcome. His insistence on the importance of unification has been a recurring theme in his New Year’s addresses.

Despite Kim’s dream of controlling the peninsula, a unification imposed by North Korean nuclear coercion or attack would be unlikely to really end the Korean War. Seeking dominance rather than unification, a North Korea in charge of all of Korea would probably use its hallmark brutality in purging ROK business, political, and military leaders, replacing them with North Koreans loyal to the Kim Family but so lacking in the knowledge and experience required to run South Korean business that they could instead destroy those businesses. The North’s use of nuclear weapons would also probably lead to the imposition of substantial international trade sanctions, which when combined with North Korean mismanagement could gradually strangle even the ROK economy which is heavily export-oriented—a real trade war. The wealth of the South would not last long in such extreme circumstances, leaving the South Korean people impoverished as the North might expropriate their residual wealth. This is not a picture of peace.

To end the Korean War, the North could abandon its designs for dominating the South. Doing so would allow the North to abandon its quest for a major nuclear weapon force, instead of investing in the welfare of the North Korean people. After all, North Korea has not needed nuclear weapons to defend itself against U.S. attacks since 1953. The North’s saying so is simply an excuse for building an offensive nuclear weapon force when no defensive force is needed.

Both sides could then turn to eliminating the hostility that each feels. But North Korea appears far more hostile toward the United States than vice-versa. After all, no U.S. indoctrination tells its people that the North Koreans are the eternal enemies of the United States, but North Koreans are trained that Americans are their eternal enemies from a very young age. Can there be true peace on the Korean peninsula if such behavior continues?

Many of the sanctions against North Korea are condition-based. If the North constrains and eventually reduces its nuclear weapon program, those sanctions will be relaxed. And without nuclear weapon threats and those sanctions, both sides could build toward ending the Korean War. But North Korea has to decide that it seeks peaceful coexistence and not peninsula dominance. Is it ready to do so?

The Black Lives Matter Movement Must Solve Its Violence Problem Violence even by a small minority within a movement “is food for the adversary.” by Amitai Etzioni

The issue is an old one; however, current events require that we revisit the question of whether it is justified to resort to violence to gain social change in democratic societies (however flawed they are). The Black Lives Matter movement deserves great credit for mainly peaceful demonstrations, and for working hard to limit looting and violence. However, the use of force by some demonstrators has received support from a significant segment of the public. A recent CNN poll found that one out of four (27 percent) Americans believe that violent protests are justified. This is a considerable increase from the 14 percent who felt this way in 2016. Almost half of the Democrats hold that violent protests are justified; the same is true of 23 percent of White respondents. 

A troublingly large line-up of public intellectuals are again providing justifications for violent protest. Wellesley College assistant professor of African studies Kellie Carter Jackson recently wrote, “Violence disrupts the status quo and the possibility of returning to business as usual. . . . The American Revolution was won with violence. The French Revolution was won with violence. The Haitian Revolution was won with violence. The Civil War was won with violence. A revolution in today’s terms would mean that these nationwide rebellions lead to black people being able to access and exercise the fullness of their freedom and humanity.” Northeastern University associate professor of sociology Gordana Rabrenovic argues that the violence that African American people experience in their interactions with state-sponsored individuals and systems leads them to ask, “If they use violence, why shouldn’t we use violence?” American University provost Daniel J. Myers offers another justification: “Violent protest . . . advertise[s] the cause in a uniquely powerful way.” University of Pennsylvania professor, historian, and author of The Loud Minority Daniel Q. Gillion reports, “Nonviolent protest brings awareness to an issue; violent protest brings urgency to an issue. It forces individuals to pay attention to these important discussions of race relations.” Finally, New York Times columnist Charles Blow wrote: “Some of the people now breaking things and burning things and looting things are ironically participating in a storied American tradition. There has long been a penchant for destruction in this country, an insatiable bloodlust, that the country conveniently likes to forget. American violence is learned violence. It is the American way. . . . White riots have often, historically, targeted black people, while black people have rioted to protest injustice. On either side, racism is the root. And we have refused to sufficiently address it. Now, that chicken is coming home to roost.” 

As I see it, revolutions are very rare, very hard to bring about, involve large bloodshed, and often are followed by new tyrannies. Moreover, there are prudent reasons to urge protestors not to resort to violence. According to Georgetown Professor Michael Kazin, “[N]on-leftists often see [the left] as a disruptive, lawless force. Violence tends to confirm that view.” Research shows that violent campaigns are less likely to succeed than nonviolent ones, and, conversely, those nonviolent movements have a higher success rate than violent ones.  

Three studies support this observation. University of Denver Professor Erica Chenoweth collected data on all major nonviolent and violent campaigns seeking the overthrow of a government or a territorial liberation since 1900. Her data shows that from the 1960s to 2006 the success rate of nonviolent movements was consistently higher than that of violent movements, and, within recent decades, the success rate of violent movements decreased steeply while the success rate of nonviolent movements greatly increased. 

Another study asked eight hundred people to react to a situation inspired by events in which violence erupted in a clash between White nationalists and antiracist groups. When antiracists resorted to violent tactics, study participants were less likely to support them and more likely to support the White nationalists. The study shows that “violence [by the antiracists] led to perceptions of unreasonableness, which reduced identification with and support for the protest group.”

These findings are further supported by Princeton University professor Omar Wasow’s study of presidential politics in the 1960s. He discovered that “proximity to black-led nonviolent protests increased white Democratic vote-share whereas proximity to black-led violent protests caused substantively important declines and likely tipped the 1968 election from Hubert Humphrey to Richard Nixon.” More recently, instead of scaring the elites into yielding, violence has contributed to the growth of increasingly large and heavily-armed police forces. 

Some claim now, as they did then, that the violence of those who supported Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and the Weathermen helped the overall cause because it made Martin Luther King, Jr.’s movement seem moderate in comparison. But this perspective ignores the fact that the elites used violent acts to smear the moderates. Violence even by a small minority within a movement, as sociologist Todd Gitlin observed, “is food for the adversary.”  The 1968 riots led to few reforms, but to great increases in the firepowers of the police. 

Moral deliberations point in the same direction. Violence is not merely a poor strategy, but it also raises major ethical concerns. The key moral value that the Black Lives Matter movement taps into is the sanctity of life. It is the recognition—reflected in the legal and moral codes of ancient and contemporary societies, above all in those of liberal democracies—that taking a life is a much more serious offense than most any other action. This is the reason courts typically mete out a much more severe punishment for murder than for other crimes. Moreover, one can readily recognize that all individual rights logically presuppose respect for the right to live. Dead people have very few rights; live ones, no matter how injured, may recover, exercise their rights, and confront those who oppressed them. This certainly holds for Black lives and is the reason major, encompassing reforms in the ways public safety is provided must be introduced and implemented. However, it is also the reason to oppose violence—every life precious. Indeed, I believe a strong case can be made for the Black Lives Matter movement to add to its brief the demand that all death penalties be outlawed.  

One may argue that—so far—loss of life has been inflicted almost completely by the police and not by the demonstrators, which is, indeed, to the demonstrators’ credit. However, once violence is justified, protests lose on both prudent and moral grounds.   

Amitai Etzioni is a university professor and professor of international affairs at The George Washington University. In 1968, he wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine called “Confessions of a Professor Caught in a Revolution.”

Russia, Be Afraid: Poland Might Get a Powerful New Anti-Tank Missile Israel’s NLOS missile could breath new life into Poland’s defenses against Russia. by Caleb Larson

The Israeli defense and technology company Rafael is participating in Poland’s newest anti-tank program. The program, called the Ottokar-Brzoza tank destroyer program, aims to outfit Polish forces with a powerful new anti-tank capability.

The NLOS is the longest-range variant in Rafael’s SPIKE missile family. According to company data, the NLOS has a standoff range of thirty-two kilometers, or nearly twenty miles, giving the missile a large coverage area. The NLOS’ guidance unit identifies targets visually, without laser guidance, tracking radar, or GPS. As a result, the missile is less likely to be detected and intercepted before reaching its target and is considered “stealthier.” The missile uses forward observers on the ground or UAVs in the air to relay optical target information to the missile, which can differentiate between high- and low-level targets while in flight.

If the SPIKE NLOS is accepted, the Israeli company would license missile production to Mesko, a Polish munitions manufacturer, and the NLOS would be manufactured in Poland—an attractive offer for Poland’s domestic defense industry.

Rafael’s design features a hull-mounted missile launcher that holds eight SPIKE NLOS missiles and may be mounted to Poland’s KTO Rosomak 8x8 vehicle, or alternatively to Poland’s Soviet-era BWP-1. Mating the NLOS system to the latter platform could potentially give an otherwise obsolete vehicle new abilities.

Importantly for both Poland and Rafael, the newer NLOS launcher is compatible with the thousands of SPIKE missile variants that Poland already has in service, including the SPIKE LR and SPIKE LR2, and would give Polish forces a greater amount of logistical flexibility. The NLOS is also slated to participate in Poland’s Kruk attack helicopter program, a competition that aims to replace the aged Mi-24 helicopter fleet still flown by the country.

If Rafael wins the tender, the deal could potentially be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, depending on how many NLOS units Poland buys and how widely the anti-tank missiles are distributed. Despite being manufactured by a non-NATO country, the SPIKE NLOS and other SPIKE variants are interoperable with NATO, another beneficial feature for the Alliance partner.

NATO Compatible, But Uncertainties Remain

Poland’s tank destroyer program is intended to bolster the country’s defenses against major armored movements from the East, namely Russia. Still, uncertainties linger.

NATO recently completed Defender-Europe 20, which was the “largest deployment of U.S.-based forces to Europe in more than 25 years with 20,000 soldiers deployed directly from the U.S. to Europe,” according to official reports. Another exercise within the Defender-Europe framework, Allied Spirit, focused on interoperability at the tactical level and saw 6,000 Polish and American troops training together in Poland.

Both exercises come on the heels of President Trump’s threat to remove Germany-based American troops, though where exactly the troops would be moved to remains uncertain. Locations as far away as Guam and Hawaii have been suggested as part of America’s reorientation toward the Pacific, though moving formerly Germany-based troops to Poland isn’t out of the question.

An American presence in Poland is seen as essential to deterring Russian aggression in Eastern Europe. In 2019, Trump and Polish President Andrzej Duda reportedly agreed to move up to 1,000 American troops to Poland, and more American troops in Poland would not only be welcome—but necessary for preventing or resisting a Russian invasion. With or without the Americans, Polish capabilities appear poised to grow.

It’s Time to Stop Defending the Status Quo of Foreign Policy Failure Here is a better way forward. by Daniel L. Davis

In February 1991 I fought as a green 2^nd Lieutenant under then-Captain H.R. McMaster, who would go on to win combat fame in 2005 Iraq and as Trump’s National Security Advisor. I watched McMaster provide exceptional leadership of our unit prior to war and watched him perform brilliantly under fire during combat. It gives me no pleasure, therefore, to note that his most recent work in Foreign Affairs has to be one of the most flawed analyses I’ve ever seen.

McMaster’s essay, “The Retrenchment Syndrome,” is an attempted take-down of a growing number of experts who argue American foreign policy has become addicted to the employment of military power. I, and other likeminded advocates, argue this military-first foreign policy does not increase America’s security, but perversely undercuts it.

We advocate a foreign policy that elevates diplomacy, promotes the maintenance of a powerful military that can defend America globally, and seeks to expand U.S. economic opportunity abroad. This perspective takes the world as it is, soberly assesses America’s policy successes and failures of the past decades, and recommends sane policies going forward that have the best chance to achieve outcomes beneficial to our country.

Adopting this new foreign policy mentality, however, requires an honest recognition that our existing approach—especially since 9/11—has at times been catastrophically bad for America. The status quo has to be jettisoned for us to turn failure into success.

These failures have not been merely “policy mistakes” but have had profound consequences for our country, both in terms of blood unnecessarily wasted and trillions of dollars irretrievably lost. The very last thing we should do is defend a failed status quo and subvert new thinking. McMaster does both in his essay.

McMaster grievously mischaracterizes the positions of those who advocate for a sane, rational foreign policy. He tries to pin a pejorative moniker on restraint-oriented viewpoints via the term “retrenchment syndrome.”

Advocates for a restrained foreign policy, he says, “subscribe to the romantic view that restraint abroad is almost always an unmitigated good.” McMaster claims Obama’s 2011 intervention in Libya failed not because it destabilized the country but because Washington didn’t “shape Libya’s political environment in the wake of Qaddafi’s demise.” And he claims Trump’s desire to withdraw from Afghanistan “will allow the Taliban, al Qaeda, and various other jihadi terrorists to claim victory.”

In other words, the only policy option is to keep doing what has manifestly failed for the past two decades. Just do it harder, faster, and deeper.

But the reality of the situation is rather different.

We had won all that was militarily winnable on the ground in Afghanistan by the summer of 2002 and we should have withdrawn. Instead, we have refused to accept reality for eighteen additional years and we have lost thousands of American service members and trillions of American tax dollars to finance permanent failure.

We should never have invaded Iraq in 2003. But once we realized the justification for the war had been wrong, we should have rapidly withdrawn our combat troops and diplomatically helped facilitate the establishment of an Iraqi-led state. Instead, we refused to acknowledge our mistake, fought a pointless eight-year insurgency, and then instead of allowing Iraq to solve its own problems when ISIS arose in 2014, unnecessarily went back to help Baghdad fight its battles.

Likewise, the U.S. continues to fight or support never-ending combat actions in Syria, Libya, Somalia, Niger, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and other lesser-known locations. There is no risk to American national security in any of these locations that engaging in routine and perpetual combat operations will solve.

Lastly, large portions of the American public—and even greater percentages of service members who have served in forever-wars—are against the continuation of these wars and do not believe they keep us safer. What would make the country more secure, however, is adopting a realistic foreign policy that recognizes the world as it truly is, acknowledges that the reason we maintain a world-class military is to deter our enemies without having to fight, and recognizing that our interests are far better served by being an exemplar to the world rather than trying to force it to behave a certain way.

The time has come to admit our foreign policy theories of the past two decades have utterly failed in their objective. We have not been made safer because of them and the price continually imposed on our service members is unnecessary and unacceptably high. It is time to abandon the status quo and adopt a new policy that is based on a realistic view of the world, an honest recognition of our genuinely powerful military, and realize that there are better ways to assure our security and prosperity.

Coming Soon: Russian Bombers (Now Armed with Hypersonic Missiles?) Hypersonic missiles have been seen as a potential game changer, with some in the U.S. military warning that there is really no defense against the missiles due to their speed. by Peter Suciu

 

The Russian Air Force has recently conducted testing of a new hypersonic aircraft missile for a modified version of the Tu-22M3M aircraft.

The Russian Air Force has recently conducted testing of a new hypersonic aircraft missile for a modified version of the Tu-22M3M aircraft. According to Russian state media, the work on the new missile began several years ago and its testing was completed simultaneously with the work on the upgraded bomber.

"Recently, a new hypersonic missile was tested on the Tu-22M3," a source in Russia's military-industrial complex told TASS. "The missile will be part of the armament range of the upgraded Tu-22M3M along with a number of other latest aviation weapons."

The source added that the missile is not part of the line of X-32 missiles, but did not provide the characteristics of it, except to confirm that it is "completely different."

The X-32 (Kh-32) is a supersonic air-launched cruise missile that has a range of 600 to 1000km, and it has been the primary missile on the Tu-22M3M bombers since 2016. The Tu-22M3M supersonic bomber is the latest upgrade of the Tu-22M3 with expanded combat potential. The upgrade provided new electronic equipment including navigation, communication, sights, engine controls, fuel mechanisms and electronic warfare. These upgrades increased the navigation precision, simplified maintenance and preflight preparation.

According to past reporting in The National Interest, the Tu-22M3M boasts 80 percent new avionics over the original Tu-22M. An important part of the upgrade package was the inclusion of up to three of the Kh-32 missiles, which are classified as anti-ship missiles, but were also developed to be effective against critical infrastructure targets including bridges and power plants. That missile allowed the Tu-22M3M to occupy a unique position between strategic and operational-tactical roles.

Hypersonic missiles have been seen as a potential game changer, with some in the U.S. military warning that there is really no defense against the missiles due to their speed.

Given that fact and the potential the missiles could possess weapons as offensive, it is easy to see why Russia has moved forward with multiple platforms. The Russian defense industry has developed two types of aircraft hypersonic missiles TASS reported. This includes the Kinzhal, the latest Russian airborne system that consists of a MiG-31K aircraft as a delivery vehicle and hypersonic missile. The Kinzhal is the airborne version of the Iskander tactical missile system.

The hypersonic Kh-47M2 Kinzhal missile was also designed to be compatible with the Tu-22M3. It is one of several flagship weapons unveiled by Russian President Vladimar Putin during this state-of-nation address at the beginning of 2018. Putin and subsequent Russian commentary has stressed the missile's speed and capacity to maneuver in mid-flight, which render it non-interceptable by any existing missile defense system. It has an alleged range of 2,000 to 3,000km, which makes it a threat to critical land infrastructure and large surface targets such as aircraft carrier strike groups.

Another hypersonic missile that is currently in the Russian arsenal was created for the Su-57 fifth-generation fighter, but the missile name and characteristics are unknown.

China Wants to Sink Your Navy with Hypersonic Missiles These upgrades will ensure the ability to pack a heavy punch. by Peter Suciu

A volley of the YJ-12s could pose a significant threat to even the most sophisticated air defense system. 

The Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has increased the potency of its Luhai-class Type 051B destroyer, Shenzhen (DD 167), with 16 container launchers for YJ-12 supersonic anti-ship missile. The warship, the only one of its class, first entered service in 1999 and was commissioned by the PLAN Navy South Sea Fleet as its flagship. It was originally armed with the YJ-83 subsonic sea-skimming anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCM), which have been described as being comparable to the U.S. Navy's Harpoon.

The YJ-83 boasted an impressive range, but it lacked the strategic impact of the YJ-12 – which has both speed and range. Forbes noted that a volley of the YJ-12s could pose a significant threat to even the most sophisticated air defense system. It also has a large warhead that could make it potentially quite devastating even to capital warships such as aircraft carriers.

Also known as the CM-302 in its export name, the YJ-12 employs a ramjet engine that allows it to cruise at supersonic speed Mach 2 to 3, or a maximum range of 280 to 400 kilometers per hour. The missile reportedly utilizes an inertial guidance system that is coupled with a global navigation satellite system (GNSS). The new missiles are also reportedly being refitted to the PLAN's Sovremenny-class destroyers, which are based on Russian designs from when China upgraded its defense capabilities with Russian technology.

At the time of its introduction of the Shenzhen, it was the largest surface combatant vessel ever commissioned by the PLAN, but despite its increased size and displacement, the destroyer did not feature any significant improvements in weapons systems and sensors and was largely seen to be deployed with rather "meager armament," which include a single HHQ-7 short-range anti-aircraft missile launch, just four twin 76mm guns, and the eight YJ-83 anti-ship missiles.

All this explains the efforts of the Chinese to refit and upgrade the warship. It had been spotted undergoing a modernization refit at the Zhanjiang Naval Base in 2015, which included some significant improvements in its weapons and sensors. In recent years the warship's Type 381A radar was upgraded to the Type 382 and additional Type 364 radar systems.

Last November the Shenzhen returned from its most recent major refit, which included the installation of an HHQ-16 vertical launch system consisting of four sets of eight units and allows it to host 32 ship-to-air missiles to shoot down incoming hostile aircraft and missiles. This replaced the single HHQ-7 SAM launch on the bow deck.

Forbes noted that China's first-generation of modern warships, including the Shenzhen, are unlikely to be as capable as newer and larger types, these upgrades will ensure the ability to pack a heavy punch. 

The Shenzhen has participated in numerous military operations, but it also worth noting that it has made port calls to numerous countries, making it a star in naval diplomacy. It now has even more to show off.

We Have Video: Russia is Upgrading its Nuclear Drones and Hypersonic Missiles Russian Ministry of Defense released brief promotional footage to show off development of ambitious weapons projects. by Mark Episkopos

The Kremlin can be expected to ramp up their ongoing strategic weapons projects in a bid to diversify both their nuclear and conventional deterrent over the coming years. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February Address to the Federal Assembly made waves for its international political implications, and rightly so. But less covered, though arguably no less important, were Putin’s updates on several of Russia’s most ambitious weapons projects: Poseidon and Tsirkon.

As previously covered, Poseidon is a nuclear-powered underwater drone armed with a 2-megaton atomic payload. Its explosion is meant to generate a radioactive tsunami, capable of destroying coastal cities and other infrastructure several kilometers inland.

Poseidon is “successfully undergoing tests,” Putin announced last week. Later that day, the Russian Ministry of Defense released brief promotional footage to drive the point home. The video, entitled “proving grounds testing of the Poseidon system,” shows little of the Poseidon system in action. Instead, it depicts Russian sailors hustling about what appears to be the Sarov test submarine, before cutting to several green-tinted, above-surface shots of the submarine. Nonetheless, Defense Minister Shoigu declared the tests a success and the system is reportedly on track for its anticipated 2019 launch.

Putin added that Poseidon boasts an “unlimited range.” Presumably, this means that the underwater drone can traverse virtually infinite distances before reaching its target. With a maximum speed of 200 kilometers and effective depth of “thousands of feet” below the surface, the Kremlin believes that Poseidon travels too fast and too deep underwater to be reliably intercepted. While impressive on paper, it remains to be seen to what extent traveling at such breakneck speeds compromises Poseidon’s detectability as it enters within detonation range of its coastal target.

While others have expressed skepticism concerning Poseidon’s supposed invincibility and even its military value, what makes it such a potent addition to Russia’s nuclear arsenal is precisely that it can succeed strategically even if it fails tactically. Poseidon’s mere deployment off hostile coasts is almost guaranteed to cause mass political confusion, thereby serving as a cover for a different military or political operation even if it is ultimately intercepted.

Putin went on to highlight another “promising innovation”: “Tsirkon, a hypersonic missile that can reach speeds of approximately Mach 9 and strike a target more than 1,000 km away both underwater and on the ground. It can be launched from water, from surface vessels and from submarines, including those that were developed and built for carrying Kalibr high-precision missiles, which means it comes at no additional cost for us.”

This is more or less a condensed summary of what is already known about 3M22 Tsirkon, with one notable exception. Past reports have pegged Tsirkon’s speed at around Mach 6 with one CNBC source alleging Mach 8, but Putin is now publicly stating a speed of “approximately Mach 9” or around 6,900 miles per hour. There are a few factors that may account for this discrepancy: “approximately Mach 9” may be a generous way to describe the high end of Mach 8, Tsirkon’s speed may have increased from developmental progress made over the years, or there may be more than one version of Tsirkon. 

Meanwhile, Putin’s emphasis on cost-effectiveness reflects one of Tsirkon’s guiding design principles as a versatile, multi-purpose weapon that seamlessly integrates with a wide range of existing delivery systems including even certain bomber aircraft.

Unlike with Poseidon, Russian officials have not offered a concrete timetable on Tsirkon’s development. But as Cold-War era arms control regimes continue to disintegrate, the Kremlin can be expected to ramp up their ongoing strategic weapons projects in a bid to diversify both their nuclear and conventional deterrent over the coming years. 

The F-35 Program Will Cost $1.5 Trillion. Is It Worth It? Thanks to sunk costs, the program could soon be too big to fail. by Sebastien Roblin

Rather than fully replacing the last generation of jets, the F-35 may best fit in as a complement to them.

The F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter is estimated to be the most expensive weapons system in human history, based on its projected lifetime cost of $1.5 trillion dollars ($406 billion for the aircraft, the rest in lifetime operating costs)—and that’s before we factor in the endless cost overruns.

One could argue there is a certain logic to this. The United States spends greater sums on the military than any other country (though some spend a greater percentage of GDP), and it has emphasized air power as its chief military instrument in recent decades. Additionally, different variants of the F-35 are prepared to equip the Air Force, Navy and Marines through most of the twenty-first century, and the type is also slated to serve in the air forces or navies of Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, South Korea and Turkey—with more countries likely to join the list.

However, the F-35 program has been notoriously mismanaged and perpetually over budget, and remains far behind schedule. The Pentagon was persuaded to pay for “concurrent” production of F-35s before it had been developed into a fully operational prototype; today Lockheed is shipping non-feature-complete F-35s, which will need to be expensively upgraded later when new components and systems are finally ready. Listing everything that was and continues to be wrong with the F-35 procurement process could be the subject of many articles.

But at the end of the day, however mismanaged the program may have been, does the F-35 at least amount to a decent jet fighter?

How Did the F-35 Come to Be?

Back in the 1990s, the U.S. Air Force developed the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter, which arguably still reigns as the top air-superiority fighter in service: it is fast, highly maneuverable and extremely stealthy. However, the Raptor was less optimized for ground-attack roles and deemed too expensive to build and operate to serve as a replacement of the Pentagon’s large inventory of fourth-generation fighters—so production was cut to just 180 aircraft, 120 of which serve in operational units.

The Navy and Marines also needed a new fighter, so the Pentagon committed to building a more multirole “joint” stealth fighter that would eventually replace the F-15, F-16, FA-18 and AV-8 Harriers serving in all four branches. The last time an interservice fighter-bomber was pursued, it didn’t work out, but Lockheed and Boeing both gave their best shot anyway, and the former won the competition. The JSF was supposed to a more affordable stealth fighter that could also be marketed to friendly nations, unlike the Raptor.

The trickiest requirement for the JSF was the Marine Corps’ insistence on making its version of the F-35 a jump jet. For historical reasons, the leathernecks want jets like the Harrier that can fly off smaller Marine-operated amphibious carriers or remote forward bases. However, the compromises needed to make them work leave them significantly inferior to conventional fighters. Lockheed actually acquired schematics for a prototype Russian jump jet called the Yak-41, and tried to make the most aerodynamic airframe possible.

Sniper, Not a Sword-Fighter

To cut a long story short, the additional weight and bulkier fuselage necessary to make the F-35B jump jet version left all variants of the F-35 saddled with performance thresholds that are objectively inferior to the fourth-generation fighters it is intended to replace.

The F-35 has a maximum speed of Mach 1.6, compared to Mach 2 to 2.5 for the F-16 and F-15, respectively. Its service ceiling is fifty thousand feet, compared to sixty thousand for the other models. In 2015, the Air Force tested the F-35 in a short-range dogfight with an F-16D mounting external fuel tanks, and the test pilot complained that it was simply out-turned and less energy efficient than its more agile opponent.

This critique doesn’t mean that the F-35 is a terrible plane. In one post (scroll down for English), a Norwegian F-35 pilot praises its ability to maintain high angles of attack. Nonetheless, the Lightning remains less kinematically optimized for air-to-air combat than most fourth-generation fighters.

The Air Force and Lockheed, however, insist that the F-35 isn’t meant to engage in a within-visual-range dogfight in the first place. After all, low-observable aircraft are stealthier when they are more distant from adversaries—and new beyond-visual-range missiles like the AIM-120D or British Meteor that can strike enemies up to a hundred miles away potentially allow an F-35 to sneak up on enemy aircraft and engage them with missiles without having to get close. Such a strategy is aided by the superior characteristics of U.S. Active Electronically Scanned Array radars.

In this view of things, the F-35 would act as a sort of sniper in air-to-air engagements, stalking its prey from a distance until it has a good angle for a shot, releasing its weapons and then hightailing it for home before the (possibly faster, more maneuverable) enemy has a chance to come close enough to detect it and retaliate. And if more intense air battles are anticipated, then the more specialized F-22 could take some of the heat.

No stealth fighter has ever shot down another jet in actual combat, and long-range air-to-air missiles have only been used a few times in action, so how the F-35 performs versus fourth-generation fighters depends a great deal on theory rather than operational experience. The Air Force feels this strategy has been validated by the results of repeated air combat exercises in which stealth fighters have racked up kill ratios as lopsided as 15:1 against faster, more maneuverable fourth-generation jets. And because of its low-observable characteristics, the F-35 can pick and choose when to engage and when to withdraw from a dangerous opponents in a good position.

Of course, those exercises are only good predictors of performance if they are built around correct assumptions about air warfare will work out. A big question remains, concerning how high the hit rate will be for long-range air-to-air missiles, which have seen limited use in actual combat. An estimated hit rate of 50 percent may prove optimistic. Here, F-35 doubters may point out that the Air Force overestimated the hit rate of its air-to-air missiles during the Vietnam War, resulting in disappointing kill ratios when pitted against North Vietnamese fighters in that conflict.

Critics also point out that stealth would not prevent an F-35 from being detected if an enemy got close, as stealth fighters begin to appear on X-band targeting radars once the distance is short enough. Furthermore, though optimized for minimal infrared signature, stealth fighters remain susceptible to detection by infrared-search and track (IRST) systems.

Finally, the stealth fighters can be tracked using low-bandwidth radars, which are typically found on ground-based installations. Such radars lack the resolution to engage a stealth fighter with missiles from distance, but they could be used to direct intercepts by fighters, or to stage short-range ambushes with the targeting radars of surface-to-air missile systems—the latter a technique used to down an F-117 stealth fighter over Yugoslavia in 1999.

Another tactic could be to overwhelm stealth fighters with a swarm of lower-cost jets, accepting some losses while charging into the short-range envelope the F-35 is vulnerable in—a tactic that caused the defeat of F-35s by inferior Chinese jets in a RAND Corporation simulation.

F-35 proponents, in turn, are skeptical that the ability to pull off tight maneuvers is as useful as it once was—a view in sharp contrast to that of Russian aircraft manufacturers, which continue to produce super-maneuverable jets with vector thrust engines. American air-combat doctrine emphasizes maintaining a high energy state through speed, and altitude that can be traded for speed. Pulling off extremely tight turns may help dodge a missile, but usually at the cost of so much energy that the aircraft will have little speed and altitude left to evade a follow-up attack.

Furthermore, modern short-range heat-seeking missiles like the American AIM-9X and Russian R-73 can target hostile aircraft through a helmet-mounted sight without needing to point the aircraft’s nose at a target (though doing so still confers additional momentum, of course). Such missiles are believed to have hit probabilities as high as 80 percent, quite possibly making short-range dogfighting agility a moot issue—though an F-35 configured for stealth can’t carry any AIM-9s.

Insufficient Payload and Range?

There’s another issue in play: can the F-35 carry a worthwhile payload? If a Lightning is to remain stealthy, it cannot carry external weapons, limiting it to just four (or, eventually, six) missiles carried in a stealthy internal-weapons bay, plus a twenty-five-millimeter cannon. This does not compare favorably to the eight to ten hardpoints on most fourth-generation fighters. This issue is even more salient when considering the F-35’s ground-attack capabilities in stealth mode, amounting to 5,700 pounds of internal stores, leaving them at a deficit compared to the roughly fifteen thousand pounds or more of external stores that can be carried on U.S. fourth-generation aircraft.

To be fair, Lockheed has advertised a nonstealthy “beast mode” configuration of the F-35 with sixteen wing-mounted bombs and missiles, allowing a full twenty-two-thousand-pounds payload. However, this configuration remains only hypothetical.

Payload brings us to the matter of range. Once again, the F-35 cannot rely upon externally-mounted fuel tanks if it wishes to retain its stealthy radar cross-section. In compensation, the Lightning has longer range on purely internal fuel than most fourth-generation fighters. Unfortunately, this still means that both land- and carrier-based F-35s will need to be based within range of intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) that are quite capable of devastating airbases or sinking carriers. Mid-air refueling could help with this problem, but tanker aircraft too may be vulnerable to attack, unless the Navy chooses to acquire a stealthy tanker drone.

The Pentagon remains optimistic about the F-35’s ground-attack capabilities for a simple reason: they believe the F-35 will give it a convenient tool for penetrating increasingly deadly integrated air-defense systems without having to put together a huge strike package, including jamming planes, Wild Weasel anti-SAM aircraft, escort fighters and so forth. As discussed above, F-35s wouldn’t be invulnerable to ground-based air defenses, but they would have an easier time slipping past and dismantling ground-based missile batteries with fewer support planes put at risk.

New Paradigm of Networked Warfare

F-35 proponents also emphasize that the F-35 is designed around new digital technology to an unprecedented level. It has sophisticated sensors that not only soak up copious data from the surrounding environment, but then funnel it back for use by friendly forces via high-capacity datalinks. F-35 pilots use state-of-the-art helmets that allow them to “see through” their own aircraft (which is good, as the canopy on the F-35 has poor visibility to the rear). The F-35’s mission systems computer is designed to automatically download mission parameters, while its logistics computer can offload status reports for technicians through a proprietary encrypted system.

Thus, in the F-35, the futurists of the Pentagon envision a new networked way of war, wherein each fighter will serve as much as a sensor node for a larger war machine as it does as a distinct weapons platform.

Of the course, the flipside of seeing the F-35 as the apotheosis of a networked paradigm is that it may be more vulnerable to hacking attacks and other electronic warfare systems than any warplane before, potentially allowing for a Battlestar Galactica scenario in which a digital surprise attack leaves many of the stealth fighters compromised. Particularly unpromising is that Chinese hackers apparently broken into Lockheed’s computers twice and acquired F-35 blueprints—which may explain why China’s J-31 Gyrfalcon stealth fighter bears more than a passing resemblance to the American stealth jet.

All in all, the F-35’s rising costs and mounting delays towards achieving full operational capability have caused the Pentagon to appreciably begin downsizing or delaying F-35 orders in the near term, and advance plans on keeping the older F-15, F-16s and FA-18 in service into the 2040s. For example, the Navy now plans on phasing in two squadrons of F-35s on its carriers alongside three squadrons of FA-18 Super Hornets. One can imagine a similar force mix of F-35s cooperating with F-15s, -16s and -22s.

Rather than fully replacing the last generation of jets, the F-35 may best fit in as a complement to them by undertaking missions that take maximum advantage of its stealth characteristics and networked sensors. For example, F-35s could range ahead and ferret out the location of enemy fighters, radars and missile batteries. Then the data they gather could then be used to coordinate intercepts and attack runs by more heavily armed Eagle or Super Hornet fighters following in their wake, or even guide their missiles to their targets.

The F-35 program has long been criticized as too big to fail, and that may in fact be true given the enormous resources already sunk into it. The Pentagon, and many other countries, are betting that the new (promising but not combat-tested) air-warfare paradigm will limit the impact of its shortcomings. However, due to mounting expenses, continual delays and breakdowns, and high operating costs, the Lightning is likely to serve alongside its predecessors for a long time to come.