It Is Official.

Iran got it. 

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Arrangements have been finalized for the delivery of Russian-made Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets, Mil Mi-28 attack helicopters, and Yak-130 jet trainers to Iran, a deputy defense minister said. Speaking to Tasnim, Deputy Defense Minister Brigadier General Mahdi Farahi said plans have been finalized for Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets, Mil Mi-28 attack helicopters, and Yak-130 jet trainers to join the combat units of the Iranian Armed Forces. He said those three advanced military aircraft will be definitely at Iran’s disposal and the processes are currently under way.

Israel is having a very bad day. It is one thing to fly against ancient Iranian F-14 Tomcats, totally another against SU-35s; and we may only guess what modification, especially in terms of radar and weapons, Iran will get. Could be, as was the case with China, a full blown domestic version. Per Yak-130s, some of them are already in Iran. 

In 404 news:

Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs James O'Brien also told reporters that Blinken, who departed on Monday for Brussels, will highlight the ongoing commitment of the United States and its allies as he takes part in the first foreign minister-level meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council in Brussels. "This is part of the process of finding a place in the alliance, which we've always said is Ukraine's future," he said.

Sure, sure. In related news--I am George Washington's great, great, great grand son. But O'Brien continued:

O'Brien said the Biden administration was confident continued military aid for Ukraine had bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress, which is considering a request for more funding for Ukraine's defense alongside military aid to Israel and Taiwan. Asked about a report by Germany's Bild newspaper that the United States and Germany were quietly nudging Kyiv into negotiations with Moscow, O'Brien said Washington does not have such a policy. We've always said that this is a matter for Ukraine to decide," O'Brien said. At a press conference in Brussels on Monday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said he expected alliance foreign ministers to "reaffirm NATO’s long-term support" for Ukraine.

As you can see, the US continues to simulate a military-political activity in 404, but, as I am on record for years--attrition is not the way the US can fight its wars. As one of the commenters to my last video posted yesterday:

Andrei is right about Svechin. If you have any interest in military theory, Svechin is definitely worth reading. I do take issue with Andrei saying there are no competent American strategists. We are there, but kept at the bottom levels of any organization (company or government agency) we work at because American organizations reward adherence to ideology, not competency. We are typically easy to spot from our resume because we will have two or more degrees from divergent fields that combine STEM and soft sciences, have excellent critical thinking, and practice the Yoga principle Satya (truthfulness). This means we are in constant trouble at any organization we work at and not promoted beyond the bottom levels because they do not want people who are ruthlessly, brutally, honest because it exposes just how utterly corrupt all organizations in America are today. The only reason we will even have a job at all is because they do occasionally need competent analysis.

Well, that might be true, but real top level military strategists in the US do not exist in the midst of the military-political top brass--the system itself is wound in such a way, that any departure from self-aggrandizing and mythologizing US military leads to a collapse of a system as a whole--the process we observe now. Suddenly, against the background of SMO and how it is being prosecuted by Russia, US military "accomplishments" began to look rather timid, to put it mildly. As per military hardware, this is not even funny. Just in air defense alone, the US is not even in the same league as Russia, and I would argue that in terms of netcentric operations in REAL combat conditions, the US is lagging behind. And you all know about combat aviation and missiles. Quoting General Cavoli--scale, scale, scale.

In conclusion, to cynics on these boards. Do not rush with your theories before the deed is done. This guy is in a heap of trouble. 

What an animal.

And Again, Isn't It Too Late?

So, the news on Defense Policy Board meeting at December 5-6 2023. 

Agenda: On December 5, 2023, and December 6, 2023, the DPB will receive classified briefings regarding U.S. Defense Policy toward Russia through 2050. The DPB will receive briefings from the following: Lt Col Jesse Humpal, Designated Federal Officer (DFO) for the Defense Policy Board, will discuss the FACA requirements for the DPB and establish the closed meeting rules; The Honorable (Hon.) Sasha Baker, Acting USDP, will welcome the DPB; The Hon. Mara Karlin, Performing the Duties of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (DUSDP), and The Hon. Celeste A. Wallander, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, will provide an update on how the Office of the USDP is approaching Russia; Mr. Nicholas R. Berliner, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia and Central Asia, National Security Council, will provide an update from the Intelligence Community on how they are approaching Russia; General Charles Q. Brown, Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, will discuss how he is approaching Russia; General Christopher G. Cavoli, Commander U.S. European Command will provide an update on how the combatant command is approaching Russia; the DPB will provide its advice and recommendations to the Hon. Lloyd James Austin III, Secretary of Defense, and the Hon. Kathleen Hicks, Deputy Secretary of Defense; and the Hon. Mara Karlin, Performing the Duties of the DUSDP, and Mr. Elee Wakim, Military Experts Working Group, will provide their findings related to the War in Ukraine. The meeting will then conclude. 

Russian media also reported on this meeting, but here is immediately THE issue. Yes, we can assume that general Cavoli is a professional, but the rest. Kathleen Hicks is a classic diversity hire and a product of the US degree mills in "political science" and "national security studies"--a completely compromised fake courses based on America's military mythology and confabulated history. Same goes for Mara Karlin, same goes for Elee Wakim, not to speak of Lloyd Austin--an affirmative action general, in the words of Colonel Macgregor. 

These ARE NOT experts in strategy--US has NO experts in strategy serving in any US Administration since W. These are precisely the people behind a catastrophe in 404 and the only skill they have is in navigating deep recesses of DoD's bureaucracy. That's it. People who drove the United States into the concrete wall of Russia's military-economic might and who, like most America's top military and political brass, have zero background in Russia, cannot and will not be able to develop THE only strategy which is left for the US if it wants to preserve herself as a major power--to start talking to Russians without any preconditions. One of the reasons for that urgency being also the fact that the gap in military power between Russia and the US is widening with incredible speed. 

Here is Rand Paul talking to one of the State Department creatures two weeks ago:

This colorless bureaucrat cannot even advance the basic high school argument on Russia. He has no clue what's the difference between Russian economy, especially tightly controlled military-industrial complex, and that of the US. This IS the level, these ARE the people in Biden Admin who unleashed hell and completely lost control of it and now Russia decides what and how to do with the remnants of Pax Americana scaffolding. Send in Abrams tanks--Russians love Christmas and New year celebrations, and burning Abrams tanks has its solid monetary benefits. Ah, wait, they want Abrams back, they will send more Leopard IIs.

Excellent Piece From Andrei Raevsky.

It is titled:Tactics without Strategy is the Noise Before Defeat. Andrei notes:

The title of this article is a quote by the famous Chinese general, strategist, philosopher, and writer Sun Tzu who lived 2500 years ago.  And while it is true that warfare has dramatically changed over the past millennia (for example, operational art was added as an intermediate level between tactics and strategy), the fundamental logic of Sun Tzu still applies.  To grossly oversimplify this issue, you could say that tactics are the means towards an end which has to be defined and the definition of that end goal is strategy.  Again, this is ridiculously oversimplified, but for our purposes that is good enough.

Then he arrives to this conclusion:

So what can the US/NATO bring to the table?

• A world class C4ISR (very useful, but also potentially very vulnerable)
• A world class submarine force (useful only to fire cruise missiles)
• A large amount of subsonic and mostly outdated cruise missiles
• A comparatively small ground force (with no real air defenses)
• Air forces which have no experience operating in a *very* dangerous environment.
• A very robust nuclear triad

Since we know from Sun Tzu that “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat” we can immediately see that none of these capabilities has any chance to avoid a NATO defeat.  In other words, US commanders will soon have to face an even worse choice: defeat or nuclear war. I submit that the West currently has neither (real, meaningful) tactics nor any strategy. None. All I see is magical thinking, narcissistic delusions, a mindset shaped by centuries of relative impunity and an over-arching, blind, hatred of Russia and everything Russian. Hardly the ingredients for a victory (under any definition thereof) against the most powerful continental warfare military on the planet.

Difficult to disagree.

Scratching My Head.

Ahem. I don't know how to read into this.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy is taking major steps in an attempt to shake off years of false starts and setbacks with the Littoral Combat Ship program, an effort Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday said he’d oversee on his watch. In an exclusive interview with Defense News on July 16, Gilday listed LCS as a major priority, saying he will turn up the heat on efforts to get the ship to become a major contributor to fleet operations.“There are things in the near term that I have to deliver, that I’m putting heat on now, and one of them is LCS,” Gilday said. “One part is sustainability and reliability. We know enough about that platform and the problems that we have that plague us with regard to reliability and sustainability, and I need them resolved.”

My take on this whole spike in activity regarding these very expensive and grossly under-gunned, putting it politely, ships is related to news from Russia who started trials for her combat modules for project 22160 patrol ships.

Gilday’s goal of fielding the mission modules is well along already, according to two sources familiar with the progress, who spoke to Defense News on condition of anonymity.The mine-warfare mission module is on track for a final test and evaluation by the end of this year, a source with knowledge of the program told Defense News, and the individual components have already passed testing and are in initial low-rate production.End-to-end testing of the mine-warfare mission module is set to begin in fiscal 2021 and is on track to have its initial operating capability declared in 2022, another source said.The status of the ASW mission module, which has been a regular target of Congress-imposed budget cuts, is a little less clear.

Let's face it--the issue with combat modules for LCS is nothing new, as is the issue of preposterous costs for such a ship, in excess of $700 million per hull. What may become an issue, and a huge one at that, will be if Russians will succeed (I am pretty sure they will) with testing of their own modules, including ASW one, and appearance of project 22160, say in Mediterranean, carrying containers with Kalibrs or P-800s, or 3M22s together with ASW packages. This WILL create a shitstorm in appropriate Committees and subcommittees in Congress--remember, pr. 22160 are shitstorm corvettes--because the question will be this: why those fvcking Russians managed in few years to come up with several working modules for what amounts to their version of LCS (of sorts) and we cannot do it for more than a decade? I would say such a question, actually, will be a legitimate one. But then guess what--have you heard about F-15X lately? I heard:

And now the Air Force is doing just that. Last week, the Defense Department announced in its daily digest of defense contracts awarded that Boeing will produce an unspecified number of F-15EX aircraft over the next three years, at a total cost of $22.89 billion.

Oh baby, for around $90 million a pop for a venerable and slightly up-gunned F-15 that looks so...so... Pentagonish. But isn't it how the whole US Defense Budget is spent? I omit here all those "doctrinal" decisions such as producing a rather mediocre aircraft such as F-35, but it will do for attacking third world nations, and calling it "Stealth" because 1950s radar cannot "detect" it, but generally one has to wonder "where's the beef"?  Argument of "complexity" of US weapon systems is a complete bunk--I write about this for years and people at TAC question this too.

How Bells, Whistles & Greed Blew Up the Defense Budget. The hawks say we need to spend $740B a year because our weapons systems are so much more complex now. Here's the real story.

OK, let me cut to the chase--most American "hawks" are not hawks but chicken-hawks most of who do not know shit from shinola when dealing with military, because they lack proper education and experience which would allow them to pass sound judgements on the issue of actual warfare. US weapon systems are no more complex than many from Europe, let alone Russia. Term "sophisticated" is a false equivalency and is used merely to impress dumb-asses who sign the checks for Pentagon. Criteria of Combat Efficiency of the system has long been discarded in the US in favor of monetary gain (through ridiculous unreal costs) and making Hollywood movies. The issue is not even that SU-35C, not speaking of SU-57, will tear F-35 a new one, or that Patriot PAC whatever the version, looks like, using Publius Tacitus terminology, a Nerf Gun when compared to Russian Air Defense systems. The issue is that the US simply cannot produce decent weapon system on time, on budget and, most important, cannot make it combat effective in real combat environment. 

Come on, Russians know this, so do many many people in DoD in the US, but they are not talking because US warfare long ago became about money, appearances and propaganda, not about defense. Come to think about it, not about offense either, since the US military record as of lately is not that impressive. Ridiculous price tags of US weapons didn't help much in Afghanistan or Syria, once Russia got involved there. Well, as one of the pundits concludes:

Wood’s argument that the only way to deal with adversary technology is with better technology is also false. We don’t need to out-engineer the Russias and Chinas of the world, we need to out-think them. For virtually every high-tech weapon, there is a low-tech counter. Our struggles to deal with IEDs in Iraq is the perfect example of this. The Pentagon spent $20 billion to develop counter-IED systems only to come to the realization that nothing worked as well as a dog.

Out-think is a fancy euphemism for coming to terms with military reality and facing facts, which for Pentagon will be really painful and goes completely against Modus Operandi and Vivendi both in US military and the US Congress agreed upon for the sake of keeping a gravy train running. Well, the run may continue but the US realistically cannot win a war with the peer. In fact, it will sustain colossal materiel and reputational losses gigantic price tags of its weapons notwithstanding. Just yesterday I listened to one discussion between some totally delusional "Marxist" Alekseev and former Colonel from General Staff Vladimir Trukhan, who apart from wiping the floor with Alekseev, noted that as a former Officer-operator of General Staff he doesn't take militarily NATO seriously. Or as he said: "we don't even break sweat". He has a point, but then again, I can only repeat myself--the real danger is in the United States stumbling into open military confrontation with China, let alone Russia, see its expensive military hardware destroyed en masse, not to speak of human losses, and being pushed to the threshold of the unthinkable. This is the only "out-thinking" the United Sates is capable of today and that makes me scratch my head. I heard there was a proposition to put a ballistic missile on Zumwalt-class DDGs to enable these three white elephants with a whopper of a price tag to have missiles capable of carrying hyper-sonic glider vehicles within Prompt Global Strike paradigm. If that is "out-thinking" what can I say.... Sergei Viktorovich, help!   

Ike, Strategy Rant #1

Late Stephen Ambrose, who for a while was considered America's foremost scholar on Eisenhower, not for once commented to the effect that Ike was not necessarily that great of a strategist. These comments, evidently shared by some other American historians, good and bad, all derive from the Caesarist  (or Napoleonic, if one wishes) view of the warfare. American military bias to Napoleon and his campaigns is not surprising, Carl Sandburg in his Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (if my Alzheimer doesn't fail me. If mistaken I will correct the reference later)  wrote about frustration of US West Point-graduates with the fact that they, instead of studying Napoleon campaigns, were forced to study this Russian Suvara (Alexander Suvorov). Indeed, ideas of beautiful maneuvers, lightning strikes or strategies developed by a single brilliant military mind were all good for wars fought using linear tactics and cavalry, with set-piece battles. Yet, even those set piece battles culminated in a slaughter on unprecedented scale during the Battle Of Borodino and, in the end, tore away the mantle of pure strategic genius from Napoleon. Brilliant tactician certainly he was, a strategist? A strategy as a system of (military) measures designed to achieve  political objectives of a war (Clausewitz inspired definition, later adopted by Marxists) was something else completely and, when judged against the result achieved, tactical and operational brilliance means very little when the war is lost. 

By WW II, strategic thought became what we know it today--a function of military power, which, in its turn, encompassed a huge spectrum of national capabilities ranging from industries to public education and culture. Real strategists saw the world in a very different light than Napoleon saw it. Modern armies and navies required now immense industries, massive logistical chains, originating in national centers of industry and agriculture, new weapons such as radio, tanks and combat aviation changed the outlook of the war dramatically and changed the way armies were commanded and controlled. WW II was the first war with a full blown C3ISR complex becoming a decisive factor. To command a massive army group of 800 000 troops simultaneously required more than just ability to conduct brilliant maneuvers or inspire troops with pep-talks on the even of the battle, it required a profound understanding of the mechanisms of such a command and control and that, on a strategic level, that is level of large bodies of troops capable to influence the dynamics of a whole campaign, it meant the ability to harmonize a huge number of political, purely military, human and other factors. By 1939 to have such an ability one had to be extremely well educated not only as a good field officer, one had to have a serious both education and pedigree in (general) staff work. 

The fact that Ike graduated first out of 245 officers in Command And General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, KS, in 1925 should be emphasized together with Ike's serious staff pedigree prior to WW II. Yet, the shtick of many in contemporary (since WW II) US historiography, let alone vast US military history amateur circles, is pointing out that prior to WW II Ike didn't (field) command anything larger than tank battalion. But that immediately raises a question, why then, a number of battalion commanders want to attend General Staff  academies in any serious Armed Forces? It is because they know that these are academies which open the door to the command of a much larger units. How being a superb and experienced staff officer is considered a disadvantage, while, if anything else, it is an imperative for anyone who is to be considered a serious military strategist. One of the examples of such General Staff leap into the cohort of outstanding military leaders is Marshal Vasilevsky, who, and you may have guessed it already, never commanded, before entering in 1938 the world of General Staff, anything larger than regiment. Yet, one of the most outstanding military leaders of WW II emerged back into the full field command during Red Army's operations in East Prussia. All that, after Vasilevsky planned and coordinated such battles as Moscow 1941 counteroffensive, Stalingrad, Kursk and Operation Bagration.  Not too shabby for a staff officer. 

How Eisenhower's staff pedigree could be a disadvantage, as many profess, in the war where strategic inception (Zamysel) required immense planning, hence large staffs, remains a complete mystery to me. How being a star graduate of what amounted to Russian (Soviet) equivalent of General Staff Academy is not a perfect pedigree for command of large complex forces and being a good level strategist is also a mystery to me, when speaking about Ike who has an overwhelming empirical evidence in his favor. Serious wars are not fought without serious plans and Eisenhower sure as hell was a good military planner with a good grasp of what was at stake in WW II. It couldn't have been otherwise, since in many important respects serving under George C. Marshall's command was more than ample evidence of Ike's talents. Illiterate references (in many US sources) to Ike's "administrative", a euphemism for staff officer, talents merely underscore a complete lack of understanding what is involved in serious operational and strategic planning and Ike sure has done more than his share of it. He ended up, finally, the greatest American practitioner of military strategy, which becomes even more evident against the background of many today's general officer mediocrities whose "planning" (in reality promoting their own careers) helped to squander American resources and embroil her in useless and unwinnable wars globally. 

Yet, Ike's first attempt on real strategic planning was both noble and professional. The first thing Ike understood--a fact which is largely downplayed or deliberately ignored in many American sources--was the fact that successful Allied strategy in Europe hinged on Red Army. Compare this view with the view of then Senator Harry Truman: "If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible." The contrast in attitudes and the level of a strategic thinking couldn't be starker, when Ike wrote in his diary in July 1942, after the Second Washington Conference rejected his and Marshall's Operation Sledgehammer Plan, in favor of Torch.  Depressed and dejected Ike wrote that the prize "we seek is to keep 8 million Russian soldiers fighting Germany. Failing to provide help to Russia will constitute one of the gravest mistakes in history" (need precise quote, this one from memory, but almost exact). You can find this entry in same Stephen Ambrose's national bestseller "The Supreme Commander". Ike's prophesy will come true but Cold War ideological realities helped to not only obfuscate but essentially completely reverse the clock work of the early WW II to a such degree that, in the end, real events and strategic discussions between Allies in 1941-42 have been completely overtaken by Hollywood imagery and a mythology which only now, not least thanks to immense academic efforts of Colonel David Glantz and Lt.Colonel Jonathan House, is being penetrated with the actual facts "on the ground".  

To Be Continued...

The Perils Of Mosquito--III

The existence of the missile boats as a class of ships, in Soviet/Russian case, was predetermined not just by their relatively low costs but because of the operational concept, which later became known as Gorshkov's Line. Or, in other words, the farthest edge (kromka) of the area from which the enemy attack on Soviet coast could be launched. The idea was to deny the enemy operational freedom on this line. Surely, capital ships of the Russian Navy theoretically could deal with this threat but, the thinking went, they were far more effective in meeting the enemy beyond the limits of 800-1000 mile ranges, on the high seas, way beyond the ranges of enemy's weapon systems. 

In 1992 US Navy produced its famous operational concept From The Sea, which later, in 1994, was updated to Forward From The Sea.  

Forward From The Sea 

In this document US Navy clearly stated its purpose, which since then changed very little. The United States would attack anyone who has access to sea if it thinks it is necessary: 

How the Navy Operates

Forward...From the Sea provides the basis for a simple, yet powerful, operational concept of how we will operate to carry out expeditionary operations. We conduct forward naval operations both to ensure unimpeded use of the seas and to project American influence and power into the littoral areas of the world. Expeditionary operations achieve U.S. objectives across the spectrum of the National Military Strategy. They are a potent and cost-effective alternative to power projection from the continental United States and are suited ideally for the many contingencies that can be deterred or quickly handled by forward-deployed forces. Expeditionary operations complement, enable and dramatically enhance the effectiveness of continental power-projection forces when a larger military response is needed.

  Our attention and efforts will continue to be focused on operating in and from the littorals. The landward side of the littoral can be supported and defended directly from the sea. It encompasses areas of strategic importance to the United States. Seventy-five percent of the Earth's population and a similar proportion of national capitals and major commercial centers lie in the littorals. These are the places where American influence and power have the greatest impact and are needed most often. For forward-deployed naval forces, the littorals are a starting point as well as a destination. Tactically, the distance we reach inland from the sea depends on terrain and weather, the contributions of joint and coalition forces, the potential adversary's capabilities, and the nature of our mission. The mission may require us to exercise our considerable reach and operate far inland.(C)
 

For any, even removed from naval realities, observer the language and the spirit of this concept is obvious. It is global, it is aggressive and it is, well, good only against the third rate navies. The collapse of the Soviet Union and, with it, disappearance of US Navy's only rival on the high seas played a very bad trick with US naval doctrinal thinking. Conventionally US Navy could easily defeat the remnants of the Soviet, now Russian, Navy but there was a slight "problem"--Russian Navy didn't want to fight on the high seas. In fact, in 1990s, it could barely deploy there. But things changed since. The change was in electronics and computers and, well, in the way Russia was governed. While the army of US "analysts" and "Russia experts" was busy compiling, yet again (what's new), a picture of rusty, drunk, incompetent Russia, Russian Navy was thinking in the framework which was diametrically opposite to From The Sea concept--it can only be described as From The Shore. Indeed, Russia has no business of "Force Projection" globally. In fact, even if Russia wanted to get herself into this business of blowing shit up on the remote shores, where would she "project" it, against whom? As of today, Russian naval assets either have or are on the way to the full blown conventional stand-off capability against any shore, including against targets in North America, and even these capabilities are deployed in purely  defensive posture.                          
      
Thus, the defense of the nation's shores  from the sea, which is known today as fancy abbreviation A2/AD (anti-access/access-denial) becomes the foundation of Russia's naval thinking as it should and for a very simple reason--Russia does not want to fight with the US near its coast line, the United States, on the other hand, sleeps and dreams about dominating coast lines of the states it considers hostile to the US national interests (whatever those may be between Monday and Friday of the same week) and Russia fits the bill here perfectly. President Obama, after all, compared Russia to E-bola and ISIS. Recent developments in the Black Sea (Sea Breeze, anyone) obviously have a flavor of good ole' Cold War and the statements coming from high positioned US military people testify to the fact that many in Pentagon and its neocon political handlers are barely fighting urges to get Russia into some sort of the confrontation with the "West". Russia does not want to fight, so, as the old saying goes, if the mountain doesn't walk to Mohamed, Mohamed walks to the mountain. USS Donald Cook was playing Mohamed, together with other NATO ships, for quite some time. 

USS Donald Cook and Ukrainian ship Hetman Sagaydachnyi maneuver near Crimean shores.  

Unlike demonstration of flag in the littorals of Arab countries, operations near Russia's littoral can, but hopefully will not, present any NATO's navy, or combination of those, with the number of problems they never encountered before. Unlike previous encounters with, mostly Arab, navies and greatly talked up (a favorite term of media pundits is "integrated", e.g. "Saddam has integrated air defense") military capabilities or, rather, lack thereof, the encounter, as an example, in the Black Sea, in case of the hypothetical hostilities "from the sea" will have a very different profile, because Russia, unlike previously crushed "military powers", DOES posses genuinely integrated defenses. Every single element of Russia's A2/AD is truly integrated into the very complex system of national Command and Control which:

1. Is already partially capable of providing what Admiral Cebrowski (or Garstka, or Alberts) would call a GIG (Global Informational Grid)  aka Virtual Battle Space. Yes, Russian littoral defenses start at the bottom of the sea and go up, way up, in fact to the places Russians opened the door to others--space. Including this very important targeting system known today as Liana. Last rumors I heard is that it is already on-line, but what do I know. This is the system which provides targeting data to anti-ship missiles. For those who do not know what targeting data is I would say that it is a pretty simple thing: it is either bearing (azimuth) and distance (range) to the surface target or add here the elevation (or angle of elevation) for aerial ones. This data could also be, which is just fine for ASMs, such as Yakhont, geographic coordinates, aka lambda and phi, known as geographic altitude and longitude. That's targeting in the real time. 


2. Apart from space means, including the only other global positioning system--GLONASS, Russia has, on every theater, what NO other nation crushed by NATO ever had--Russia has actual, combat-capable Air Force. Including the planes which are known as AWACS and we are talking about arguably the best airborne radar in the world. We are talking A-50 Airborne Early Warning System.

Inside A-50

3. Russia's Black Sea Fleet, quite urgently, recreated the separate brigade of SSKs, with first hull arriving to Novorossiisk (via Sevastopol, I am sure) shortly, if not already. NATO DID NOT encounter a competent and state of the art submarine force...ever. 


4. And then, of course, came Mosquitoes, which I predicted were inevitable on the Black Sea Fleet even before return of Crimea home. Russia needs salvo on the Black Sea--that is, the number of the missiles which will reach and overcome saturation threshold of the NATO's naval missile defenses, that is, as we all understand, SPY-1D and Aegis. What is saturation threshold, that it is the number of missiles at which AD system implodes and allows the "leaker" through, remains the matter of speculations. However, judging by the late 1990s scandal with US Navy trying to obtain Russian target drones based on  AS-17 Kryptons remade into SSST (Supersonic Sea Skimming Target) for training--the issue is really serious. Since then M=3 ASMs with the active radar homing (Yakhont, for example, sees targets from 70 kilometers) and EECM package became mainstay of Russian Navy and not only that. Suddenly, fairly indefensible from the air, unless external air defense cover is used, project 21631 Buyan (you see, no Osas or Komars anymore) missile ships began to appear on the Black Sea. 

Here they are at Novorossiisk Naval Base getting ready to be included in the Fleet's order of battle

The thing with these ships is that with the displacement of about one ninth of Arleigh Burke-class destroyer and the price tag of about the same proportions, that is about nine times less expensive, they can provide the coverage for the whole Black Sea. One, of course, has to consider three points above that. The brigade of such ships can also provide a salvo to the strategic depth of land theater of operations or, speaking plain language, such ships can strike any city in Europe or, can strike land targets in the Persian Gulf while themselves being in the Caspian Sea. 

Suddenly getting small is becoming fashionable, after all, 1-2 Klubs will take out any large surface combatant. And single Yakhont, certainly, will have no problem destroying the target of LCS-1 or LCS-2 caliber, which, as we all remember, were designed to fight in littorals. Russia has it for small missile ships, the new project 22800 Karakurt, which will carry a navalized version of famous Pantsyr Air Defense Complex. 

Project 22800 Karakurt

  
And all that is just the start of what many already are calling a silent revolution in the naval warfare. 19th Century proponents of Jeune E'Cole would have been ecstatic today should they have lived to see the coming age of missile as a main striking weapon of the fleet. This and, well, this electronic mambo-jumbo with all those beyond horizon radar, multi static sonar, massive jamming capabilities (I should have put point 5 for that, I will), Net Centric Warfare and other things which moved navies away from pure platform-centric posture towards networks and integration with other forces. After all, it takes, under some conditions, 8 missile salvo by150-million dollar ship to destroy about 5-6 billion dollars of the hardware. And the numbers matter, as legendary Arleigh Burke told Elmo Zumwalt:"We need numbers"(c).

To be continued.........

The Perils Of Mosquito-I

When incomparable Captain Wayne Hughes published his seminal Fleet Tactics And Coastal Combat, I guess, Mahan worshipers and Carrier Trade Union (c) went apoplectic.  

              

                             

To write about "missile era", "coastal combat" and describe small, missiles' armed US Navy's fictional Cushings to demonstrate an example of real naval combat--that is a heresy in the US Navy, which, as none other than Elmo Zumwalt put it, got used to "travel first class". Yet, Hughes' book gained a cult status among both naval aficionados and professionals, some of whom, such as Admiral Blair (at a time, C'n'C of Pacific Command) or Vice Admiral Lauthenbacher Jr. (at a time, Deputy CNO), gave the book and the author absolutely rave reviews. I can only join in my deepest admiration for Captain Hughes and his brilliant mind. 

The ongoing disaster with LCSs and huge issues with AD/A2 for US Navy only underscored the problems which develop with the fundamental premise of the Sea Control (that is, largely, US Navy) fleet, as Hughes puts it, is "Saying that navies don't "purchase and possess real estate" as armies do is to emphasize the navy as a means toward the end of controlling an enemy on the ground. Rarely is the center of gravity of a conflict on the sea or in the air." The international consensus, at least for the last two decades, is that the US Navy is doing just fine when providing the freedom of the seas and keeping Shipping Lanes Of Communications (SLOC) open. The set of the problems emerges within littorals, the coastal combat and US Navy's function of  Force Projection when it is against, and you may have guessed it already, peer or near-peer power. Of course, the US Navy thinks that it can fight and win the battle on the high seas, or open ocean, against any enemy and here US Navy has ample reasons to think so--it is, presently, undeniably the most powerful navy in the world with a superb naval tradition and combat history. But magnificent naval battles Americans won against Japan on the WW II teach only limited lessons on the modern combat. Why it is so is quite obvious--nuclear weapons and anti-shipping missiles. 

US Navy, at least its Carrier Trade Union, doesn't like anti-shipping missiles. So much so, that I will simply post here the scan from Admiral Zumwalt's marvelous memoirs  On Watch:    

              

You can easily make your own conclusions on what can only be described as the sabotage of anti-shipping missiles (ASM) development in the US Navy. No surprise then, that even today US Navy cannot deploy any true supersonic, let alone hyper-sonic, ASM. But here is the issue--some other power, of which we speak not as of yet--does have those and, apart from understanding their utility for fighting on the high seas, it developed this absolutely atrocious idea that those Mach 2-3, long range ASMs, with the development of miniature solid state electronics and improvement in propulsion could be very valuable in the littoral. Moreover, one doesn't have to spent 12 billion dollars to attain the saturation threshold of ANY air defense system to solve this one and only, most important, contemporary problem of any navy--the problem of a "leaker". In fact, this could be done for a relatively small price and can (and it did) solve the issue of the safety of own littoral. After all, the final target the fleet is on the land. It is there, where hostile government has a seat. 

For decades, during the Cold War, naval staffs of both US and USSR were calculating the probabilities of success, respectively, in attacking and defending the Soviet/Russia coast. And it was then that Russians invoked the spirits of Jeune Ecole  and its radical, for its time, ideas that, as Theodore Ropp summarized it about Jeune Ecole:

1. The weaker fleet would stay at its bases and refuse combat.

2. The stronger would be forced to do the same, for fear of the torpedo.

3.The only significant naval activity would be commercial warfare.

4. Warfare would be absolutely merciless, disregarding the laws of war.

You can read Eric Dahl's brilliant expose on Jeune Ecole in Naval War College Review here:

NET-CENTRIC BEFORE ITS TIME The Jeune École and Its Lessons for Today 

 We do not concern ourselves here with pps.3 and 4, since they require additional, and extensive, elaborations, but pps.1 and 2 capture the essence of the Coastal (or Littoral) Combat superbly, when pp.1 is corrected with addition of a single caveat:

The weaker fleet would stay at its bases and refuse combat on the high seas.    

In the littoral, however, under the defensive umbrella of own coastal aviation, screens of SSKs, which are honed for operations in this type of waters, the weaker fleet, armed with modern ASMs and well networked, becomes a true deadly menace for any navy. What used to be called a mosquito fleet becomes capable of sinking any enemy ship thus rendering enemy's capital ships useless when trying to "project force"  and that may have truly strategic, and even global, ramifications. Just like that. This reality is beginning to dawn on US Navy. Hence, however disastrous, program of LCS, which was based on Admiral Cebrowsky's "Street Fighter" concept (correct one, I may add).  In the end, FERs (Fractional Exchange Rates) do define the outcome and there is no better exchange rate (including financially), then to provide conditions for 1 billion dollars worth of assets do the job  on the force whose monetary value runs into tens of billions, while its mission could be killed by about 10 to 15 million dollars worth of leakers.  This is an excellent exchange rate from any point of view. Thus is A2/AD issue which torments US Navy today--at least it is an indicator that the Navy with so much combat history is trying to stay realistic, despite a horrendous news of the production for the sequel for Top Gun ;-) That is scary......

           

To be continued.....