Anti-ship missile ranges

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Information Dissemination sports a piece about the concern that Western surface warships and specifically U.S.Navy surface warships may be too weak in the anti-ship missiles department. Submarines and (naval) air power are not always going to save the day.

The topic is very, very technical and tricky, but there is indeed good reason to think that navies expecting to be superior in ship-killing by aircraft and submarine are prone to neglect surface warships' capabilities in this regard.

We have seen lots of Western air defence, anti-submarine and general purpose warships for decades, but the only surface combatants with a clear emphasis on surface ship killing have been smallish fast attack craft.

The whole issue may be much less dramatic or even reversed if the Raytheon RIM-174 (Standard Missile 6, SM-6) with its active radar and datalink turns out to be capable of hitting ships over the horizon. Its range is huge and both its high speed and datalink would help against many difficulties the seaskimmer missiles are facing. In physics theory, one such missile could even illuminate a target for several SM-2ER missiles with semi-active radar seeker (same 8-10 GHz frequency range) for a very short time.

As mentioned before; the whole topic is excessively technical and tricky. A single bit of info could turn conclusions upside down.

That's what I thoroughly dislike about modern naval affairs.

S O

Edit 2016-01: As of now, the USN appears to have a program to make the SM-6 capable of hitting ships (or boats) at long ranges.
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[Fun] If you thought my blog's title is disrupted by the camo scheme background ...

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... then you should not attempt to read this conference announcement flyer!
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2013/03 - some links

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An Age of Land-Based Sea Power?

By James R. Holmes

This piece follows approx. my reasoning, but I don't pay so much attention to the fashionable unmanned aviation. Land-based bombers have sunk Prince of Wales and Repulse from a long distance in late 1941 (and could have done so years earlier), Allied bombers patrolled over the entire North Atlantic in search of German submarines by 1943 and by 1944 even escort fighters could have reinforced bombing missions against distant Central Atlantic targets and guided munitions were available for high lethality against shipping.

The ranges available for land-based strike have grown even more with the introduction of mid-air refuelling.

There is really no need for a belief in fashionable robot planes to come to the conclusion that carriers are unnecessary for strike missions unless you want to strike so far away from your or allied bases that this warfare could not possibly have a defensive character. Almost exclusively aggressions or bullying would require strike missions thousands of miles away from available land bases. The Falklands War was an oddity in this regard, as it was quickly overrun and very distant from the next friendly base.

Aircraft carriers can be justified with the argument that transoceanic maritime trade convoys would require fighter protection amongst others against such long-range threats. I would buy into this. I don't buy into the necessity of carriers primarily for strike purposes.
 

Towards the Abolition of African Official Armies

by Abdullahi Osman El-Tom

He doesn't like the typical African army either.

Militarism and the Median Voter: Evidence from Cross-National and Israeli Surveys

by Jonathan D. Caverley

He has an interesting sociology / political economy thesis. I don't really agree, but the piece is extraordinarily useful for pointing out how much the income distribution and taxation distribution issue appears to influence thought in the U.S.. The "47%" debate's effects seem to spawn in the most unlikely places these days.

I can't help but point out that Americans should be alert and attempt to detect the examples of the 47% debate's influence on thought. Once they spotted an example, I would strongly recommend they seek non-American sources on the topic (which is generally advisable on all topics that produce a partisan divide). Some stuff that appears self-evident to Americans these days leaves non-partisan foreigners wondering 'WTF how could anyone have such a pattern of thought' !?
 

Agility: A key to the operational art

by Albert Bryant (1988)

I read this (skipped some of it) as part of my research for my book. It's a fine example of the official literature on military theory.

First of all, most such authors don't write because they have an deep desire to write about military theory. They do so because they were told to do so.They were told to do so because they wanted to check a box on their to-do list for their career and thus got into some school were they were told to do the writing.

They don't write because they have original thoughts, concepts or ideas. First they have to write, then they make some such thing up. Or worse; some are entirely uncreative and ask a supervising tutor for a topic.

Then they begin to write and usually very much of what they write is lip service to the doctrinal fashion du jour.

Such master thesis publications are almost without exception useless (to me).

There's a lot of crap in commercial publications about military theory, of course.
Just read Richard Simpkin's "Race to the Swift" with his partial fixation on the threat of Soviets deploying submarine helicopter carriers to invade capitals in coup de mains...this guy was treated as a serious theorist!
I also read a book about operational logistics a while ago. The book was so expensive I chose interlibrary lending instead of buying a copy. I can summarise all the useful stuff from that book in about ten lines.
Yet at least those writers have ideas.

On the other hand, some publications are just great, as is for example

Trading the Saber for Stealth:Can Surveillance Technology Replace Traditional Aggressive Reconnaissance?

by Curtis D. Taylor (2005)

The tragedy is in the noise to diamonds ratio of the overall literature on military theory.
Then again, maybe I just can't tell both apart, who knows?

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And now for something completely different:
A reminder about the importance of outside-the-box thinking and improvisation!

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Japan discovers rare earths deposits

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The Japanese may have a promising answer to China's rare earths almost-monopoly.

If only resource findings in the deep sea were more often followed by actual economically relevant activity. Disappearing resource problems and resource conflicts would be welcome news.

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Revival of the heavies

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It appears the B-2 Spirit will get company in shape of a Chinese counterpart and a Russian counterpart.

This means there might be a comeback for heavy and long-range bombers. The Su-34 was no such thing, and the difference may become important. The U.S.A.F also looks at a new bomber, which is supposedly also meant to become a long-range reconnaissance and generally a powerful sensor platform. I doubt they will pull it off given their existing inventory, but the rumours from China and Russia appear more realistic to me.

New bomber types would be a very interesting development because there's an unlikely yet real history of quite heavy (at least medium) bombers being exported to small powers. India, Libya, Iraq, Egypt and Indonesia operated Tu-16, Tu-22 or Tu-22M bombers during the Cold War.

Egyptian Tu-16 Badgers

The military utility was questionable without the Soviet's anti-shipping missile and nuclear weapon stocks, but this has definitively changed. A single bomber could ruin a middle-sized countries' powerplant infrastructure (and thus economy) in a single sortie using quite affordable off-the-shelf guided glide bombs.

The proliferation of such a devastating capability might make it necessary for non-NATO small powers to maintain a rather high air force readiness and air policing, a good early warning spy network and/or effective area air defence missiles. The latter could sooner or later bust some airliner on accident.

Such precautions might be provoked in a huge radius, as one such bomber accompanied by a tanker could fly transoceanic missions (it wouldn't need to return, after all).

'We' in the West have become accustomed to a world in which threatening capabilities or non-allied powers are rare. The DF-21D anti-ship missile and even by comparison ridiculous speedboats in the Persian Gulf were able to freak many of 'us' out. Imagine what the prospect of a nightly knock-out blow to your countries' infrastructure dealt by a power thousands of kilometres away would feel. The blow could even be internationally perceived as rather economical than a warlike - kind of the hardware version of a malicious software campaign.

I wonder whether heavy bombers of the 2020's would be exported to small powers, and whether they would provoke great defence, deterrence and diplomatic (alliance- and umbrella-seeking) reactions.

S O
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A good read

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... on the difficulties of training combat small units in a mostly peacetime setting. It focuses on the classic; the infantry platoon.

Opinion: SANDF Combat Readiness - some grave concerns

by John Dovey

June 2012

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Shaping Operations

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There is at times the impression that I'm anti-American. As mentioned before, this is rather because I rarely spend my time lauding anyone or anything but have a sizeable interest in addressing shortcomings. The German armed services and the civilians who back them get their share of critique here as well. The American military is simply huge and hyper-active, thus offers a lot of points of attack and it's within the anglophone sphere, which the blog happens to be as well (for reasons of personal training in English and of size of the potential audience).

Today I want to highlight a contribution to military theory which is in my opinion vastly underrated - and it's NIH (not invented here). It's from the U.S. as far as I know.

I'm thinking of "shaping operations" (quelle surprise! - after the blog post title ;) ).

A shaping operation is "an operation at any echelon that creates and preserves conditions for the success of the decisive operation." (The definition is also in FM 3-0, 2001, chapter 4-86)

This includes anything from logistical preparations or reconnaissance to deception and is really rather unspecific.

Illustration to make text more
easy on the eyes; from U.S.Army FM 3-0

The great utility in this is that there's a general term for all the activities which shall provide an unfair advantage in your favour prior to the decision in battle (amongst others). We have seen very much emphasis on battle itself in military history, military theory including field manuals, political discussions and such. The problem is that great performance and heroism in battle is often times simply useless. Very often the battle has won even before it began; someone has done something really right or really wrong in such a case.

I cannot really withhold some critique about U.S. doctrine and "shaping operations", though: Doctrine does have a tendency to inflate the use of a useful term instead of giving it more accuracy and a sharper silhouette over time. The end-result is that "shaping operations" is an unspectacular and widely ignored term of little value to many of its readers because while summing up a most useful field of activities, it doesn't particularly emphasize their importance or redirect much attention to them.

Moreover, U.S. Army doctrine makes the (in my opinion) huge mistake of pretending that the decision shall be sought in battle and only made more promising by shaping operations. An example:

Contingency operations in the 1990s normally followed a sequence of alert, deployment, extended build-up, and shaping operations followed by a period of decisive operations to terminate the conflict.

(FM 3-0, "Operations", dated 2001, chapter 3-4)

My minority opinion on this is that the decision shall be sought in shaping operations themselves instead of in the main effort. Your shaping operations effort was at least a partial failure if the decision only happens in battle, not prior to it. So-called decisive operations should merely confirm the decision, rarely create it by themselves.

 

S O

P.S.: I suppose this nails down a bit better what I already meant to say in 2010.
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An anecdote about what triggers intervention

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Years ago I heard a recount of what happened in Kosovo in a private conversation with someone knowing *more* about it than I did:

Apparently, the Kosovars who wanted independence understood that their guerilla thing wasn't more but harassment and an intimidation of police (the latter was of special interest). So some of theirs asked foreign diplomats to intervene, which replied that the West won't intervene until there are 5,000 dead bodies in Kosovo at the very least.

This was an obvious incentive to the Kosovars to present 5,000 dead bodies, of even better - make believe there are 5,000 dead bodies and more coming.

All the Western interventionists warmongers had to do was to present this to the Western public and suppress evidence to the contrary (including findings of an OECD mission).

In 1999, NATO attacked Yugoslavia based on genocide and ethnic cleansing allegations almost if not as much based on facts as Iraq's "WMDs".

To the West this was -just like the Bosnia intervention- not just some clean-up in the noisy backyard. It was also an opportunity to instil new purpose to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and to cooperate in security policy before Europeans and Americans could part ways for lack of a common bogeyman. We know from history books that many powers dissolved outlived alliances and faced each other as hostile only a few years later. Obviously, we didn't want this. Westerners have become too extreme in their war-making efforts for Western inter-state warfare to be acceptable.

This whole thing - especially the 5,000 dead bodies thing - is a common flashback to me these days. Every time I read about the latest allegation of the Syrian government using chemical warfare munitions I am reminded that this time Western governments have defined the rubicon, the line where crossing means war.

The effect is -again- totally predictable:

The Syrian rebels claim abut every second day that Assad's troops have used chemical agents. Western reporters in the warzone know that chemical agent stories with imagery are the hottest thing to get and speed towards every rumour. It won't take long until they extend their idea of a chemical agent that triggers intervention to white phosphorous smoke (wasn't that the eeevil thing fired into Gaza a few years ago!?).

The Western warmongers push for intervention using any such report, adding to it and suppressing contrary reports.

So please, don't fall for this propaganda. It is extremely unlikely that Assad's men would use deadly chemical agents in this civil war after such threats.

If any was reported,the report is most likely wrong OR it was a false flag operation OR it was done by out-of-control idiots whom Assad will punish himself OR it was an innovative way of defection, a kind of gift to the reels by a deserting officer.

The actual military value of a moderate instead of all-out employment of chemical agents is minimal.

We would have different news if our politicians and other warmongers were really bothered by the possibility of chemical weapon attacks on Syrian civilians: They would deliver protective equipment and set up field hospitals on the Turkish side of the border.

Whatever concerns and threats against possible chemical weapons usage they voice instead are either insincere or an expression of stupidity.

The only justification for offering a Rubicon to the crowd is in my opinion a focused effort to lure warmongers out of the closet in order to play whack-a-mole with them. Sadly, this was not the purpose of such an announcement, ever.

S O

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The circle of stupidity

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A few days ago I watched CNN International for a couple minutes while a reporter of CNN told his story about how he was among the reporters who supported the WMD scare in 2001-2003. He used a lot of archived video footages and told a story of a reporter who was erred by a mysterious mistake, along with supposedly everybody else. It was a story about the WMD scaremongering as a kind of force majeure.

I can't tell if he produced that garbage because CNN International wanted to fill some minutes on the cheap or because he felt some inner urge to excuse himself being an utter failure as a journalist.

I think this was a waste of time. Apologist and history revisionists are useless. What's really of interest is how to get it right next time and how to keep scaremongering and warmongering off the airwaves altogether.

This really useful question and the debates about it that should happen and enjoy much attention do not get much time on the airwaves.

There's probably a reason: We simply don't get it right, so every generation produces its own utter failures of this kind.  Thus we never reach a period in which the failure folks have left the top jobs and don't obstruct the progress driven by those who do not have the urge to cover up gross failures (because they didn't commit any yet).

Some great physicist once said that science progresses as quickly as the old professors die. No progress can be made while they still block progress.

Yet as societies we allow the old guard to stay in the spotlight until the new guard committed to the same follies. 

Now the real question: How can we break out of this circle of stupidity?

S O
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Alarming normalcy

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Parents safeguard their children and don't want them to play with friends who might get them into trouble. That's common sense.

To avoid bad company is also common sense for adults, unless they're risk-seekers who get a thrill by getting into trouble.

I suppose entire countries are not risk-seekers, so I suppose a country should watch out its company. Do friendly countries get yours into trouble?

"Bad company" is identifiable by the displayed normal behaviour - much better so than by how they behave when they want to make a good impression. The normal mode of operation counts.

Sadly, lots of countries have rather alarming normal behaviours. In fact, people are so used to this behaviour as normal (for the country in question) that it doesn't raise an alarm any more. Humans can get used to almost everything, good or bad.

Bad behaviour can become so utterly normal and self-evident, that a bully can even think the bullied country is the bad guy.

I saw a U.S. navy officer brief a rather public gathering about the oh-so bad and aggressive moves of the Chinese navy. Their worst offense; they patrolled waters around disputed islands. Meanwhile, the USN patrols wherever it wants, and when this means some other country feels threatened then it's U.S: foreign policy to be threatening, not some evilness as in the Chinese case. Or so they made themselves believe.

Another example is very recent, and I suppose it was again a USN move (the USN has quite a history of alarming normalcy).

Now read this article:

Iran F-4 confronts another U.S. Predator over Arabian Gulf

(defensetech.org)

Old archive photo of Iranian F-4 Phantom II

Doesn't it make Iran like the bully in this case?

Now let's shed the veil caused by drinking the kool aid and think about the facts as communicated by that article:

(1) The U.S. is obviously spying with aircraft on Iran by flying close to the border, while it's safe to say Iran doesn't do so on the U.S..

(2) U.S. military assets are thousands of miles away from home, while Iran's military assets are obviously not that far away from home (which makes defensive purposes much, much more plausible).

(3) The Iranian aircraft was obviously flying over international waters, and far, far away from the supposedly threatened U.S. aircraft.

(4) U.S. fighters bullied/threatened the Iranian aircraft or the Iranian aircraft flew away because it wanted so.

This badly reminds me of the time when the USN felt it was entitled to kill Iranian aviators just because they came into range over international waters. Like the pilots were beasts to be killed or something.

That action turned out to kill an airliner full of civilians and the USN reaction at the time was to claim it felt threatened. "Threatened" by a fighter which was not armed with any ammunition that's suitable against the supposedly threatened cruiser.

Look, this is insanity. And I don't talk about the Iranians, who can quite plausibly claim to have been largely on the defensive for three decades, and victims of foreign meddling for some more.

THEY are not the insane here. I think the ones who are insane are the ones who think bullying foreign powers like this isn't only normal, but actually means the bulled are the bullies. THAT is insane.

I guess many of my readers from the United States don't follow me here and think the Defensetech point of view is better. Thus ask yourself this:

Scenario: A Cuban spy drone flies along the U.S. Gulf Coast. An old Air National Guard fighter flies in no more than to 18 miles. Cuban fighters intercept it and force it to turn back.

Question: Would you think this was OK? Would you think the Americans are the baddies here, or would you think the Cubans are?

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It is about time that NATO and / or the United Nations specify with much publicity what constitutes self defence by military forces.

Bombing a wedding because a pilot in a supersonic-capable aircraft at 15,000 ft feels "threatened" by muzzle flashes from a wedding on the ground is no self defence. Those pilots were out of range and had to turn and close in with the others again in order to "self-defend" (Afghan Civil War post '03, more than once).

Firing at an aircraft over international waters is no self-defence, especially not if you believe it's not possibly armed with offensive weapons (Iran Air Flight 655, '88).

Firing at aircraft flying close to their countries' coastline over international waters while yourself being thousands of miles away from yours is not self defence (Gulf of Sidra '86).

Bullying a fighter that flies over international waters and doesn't close with a supposedly attacked aircraft by more than a whopping 18 miles over a rather congested Gulf is not self defence, and certainly no indicator for it being aggressive. If that Phantom II crew was aggressive, how aggressive are we then? We close with foreign military aircraft much more, all the time!

Russian Tu-95 Bear aircraft get intercepted and escorted all the time

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I assume the NATO members have neither the intent nor the political energy to force an end to aggressive stances of any of its members, despite the fact that such skirmishes as well as threatening behaviour are violations of the North Atlantic Treaty.

This inaction is regrettable, for it is in their best interest to suppress aggressive behaviour.

The United Nations should thus very publicly refresh the public's and the international community's memory about how aggressions and threats are actually banned, and have been so for generations. They should remind everyone that everyone signed and ratified this ban. They should also once and for all times draw a line to define where bullying and threatening behaviour begins and where self defence ends.

  

Bullying has lead to multiple, very bloody and totally avoidable wars, after all:

Austria-Hungary's bullying of Serbia led to the First World War. Bullying of China by Western powers and Japan has led to multiple wars and much suffering.

Bullying has laid the groundwork for the aggression against Iraq in 2003.

Bullying and threats keep degrading the security situation in the Mid East.

(There are more examples, but this list shall suffice for now.)

This crap has to end before it inflicts much more suffering!

S O
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