TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Following

The Military Thread

Go To

TuefelHundenIV Night Clerk of the Apocalypse from Doomsday Facility Corner Store. Since: Aug, 2009 Relationship Status: I'd need a PowerPoint presentation
Night Clerk of the Apocalypse
#60576: Jan 22nd 2021 at 6:00:31 PM

I knew they were doing Gan for naval systems but a land based one is very nifty.

Who watches the watchmen?
Ominae Since: Jul, 2010
#60577: Jan 22nd 2021 at 7:55:59 PM

Tokyo said that they’ll not join the UN-backed anti-nuke treaty that’s being enforced. Suga questions if it can be effective considering the likes of North Korea, China and (to some extent) Russia.

TerminusEst from the Land of Winter and Stars Since: Feb, 2010
#60578: Jan 22nd 2021 at 9:16:36 PM

No nuclear armed country would be stupid enough to join, and everybody knows that. It's not worth the paper it's written on.

Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele
eagleoftheninth Shop all day, greed is free from a dreamed portrait, imperfect Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: With my statistically significant other
Shop all day, greed is free
#60579: Jan 22nd 2021 at 11:02:11 PM

Cross-posting from the Nuclear Weapons threde: Biden administration to seek five-year extension on key nuclear arms treaty in first foray with Russia.

    Article 
President Biden is seeking a five-year extension with Russia on the only remaining treaty limiting the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals just days before it expires, said two senior U.S. officials.

At the same time, his administration is preparing to impose new costs on Russia pending a newly requested intelligence assessment of its recent activities. The officials said Biden is ruling out a “reset” in bilateral relations with Moscow as many U.S. presidents have done since the end of the Cold War.

“As we work with Russia, so, too, will we work to hold Russia accountable for their reckless and aggressive actions that we’ve seen in recent months and years,” said a senior U.S. official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive security matter.

The decision to seek a five-year treaty extension, which Russia supports but the Biden administration hadn’t settled on until now, reflects the rapidly approaching deadline for Washington to renew the New START pact Feb. 5, the officials said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that Russia “welcomes the political will” for a New START extension from the Biden administration, but needs more time to study the details of Washington’s proposal, adding that the previous conditions put forward by former president Donald Trump’s team “absolutely did not suit us.”

“Russia definitely favors the preservation of New START and its extension so as to buy some more time for proper negotiations,” Peskov said.

President Donald Trump tried to conclude a shorter extension with Moscow in the final months of his presidency, but he failed to reach an agreement after his nuclear envoy spent months trying to persuade China to join the accord before dropping that demand.

Letting the treaty expire would allow Moscow and Washington to deploy an unlimited number of nuclear-armed submarines, bombers and missiles in what many experts fear could spark a nuclear arms race and further exacerbate U.S.-Russia relations.

“New START is manifestly in the national security interest of the United States and makes even more sense when the relationship with Russia is adversarial,” the senior U.S. official said.

As the Biden administration informs Moscow of its terms for an extension, the president will order Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to provide him a full intelligence assessment of Russia’s alleged interference in the 2020 election, use of chemical weapons against opposition leader Alexei Navalny and bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, officials said.

Biden is also asking Haines for an assessment of the massive cyberattack on federal agencies and departments related to the SolarWinds software breach, which many analysts and government officials have blamed on Russia. The request for the intelligence assessments will go out this week, said the officials.

“We will use these assessments to inform our response to Russian aggression in the coming weeks,” another senior official said.

Biden’s plans for potential punitive actions toward Russia at the outset of the administration is unique among his recent predecessors, all of whom attempted to turn a new page with the Kremlin in the hopes of encouraging a more productive relationship.

“This will be the first post-Soviet U.S. administration that has not come into office vowing to forge a warmer relationship with Russia,” said Angela Stent, a senior intelligence official on Russia during the George W. Bush administration.

The skeptical posture follows four years of growing animus toward the Kremlin within the Democratic Party for its interference in the 2016 election against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Trump came into office seeking a rapprochement with Russia, but opposition from his party and congressional Democrats stymied that effort.

Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told lawmakers Tuesday that sanctions passed by Congress to target Moscow will be “extremely helpful in being able to impose . . . costs and consequences” on Russia.

Blinken said New START, which restricts the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 and deployed strategic delivery systems to 700, gives the United States “tremendous access to data and inspections” and is “certainly in the national interest to extend.”

Not all of Biden’s aides have supported the idea of a five-year extension for the treaty.

Victoria Nuland, a longtime Russia hawk whom Biden will nominate to be the No. 3 official at the State Department, wrote in Foreign Affairs over the summer that the United States should seek only a one- or two-year renewal in the hopes of retaining leverage over the Kremlin.

“Washington should not grant Moscow what it wants most: a free rollover of New START without any negotiations to address Russia’s recent investments in short- and medium-range nuclear weapons systems and new conventional weapons,” she wrote.

In responses to Biden’s decision to seek a five-year extension, Trump’s former special envoy for nuclear negotiations, Marshall Billingslea, criticized the move, saying it “shows stunning lack of negotiating skill.”

“Took just 24 hours for Biden team to squander most significant leverage we have over Russia,” he tweeted.

But U.S. officials noted that Billingslea himself tried to secure a shorter extension with his Russian counterpart, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, but failed to make a deal, leaving a critical agreement dangerously close to expiration.

“We’re aware that the last administration engaged in negotiations on an extension of a New START for months but was unable to come with an agreement,” the first senior U.S. official said. “We also understand there have been various proposals exchanged during those negations, but we’ve not seen anything to suggest that at any point an agreement on the terms that have been reported was in place.”

Arms control advocates have also opposed holding out for a shorter extension.

“There is no evidence that Russia is desperate to extend the treaty or that a shorter-term extension would make Russia more likely to negotiate a follow-on agreement,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.

“A straightforward five-year extension would provide the new president with an early win and positive momentum, help restore U.S. credibility on arms control issues, and create the potential for more ambitious steps to reduce the nuclear danger and move us closer to a world without nuclear weapons.”

U.S. officials said they hoped a quick renewal of New START could provide a foundation for new arms control arrangements, potentially including China.

“We believe it’s absolutely urgent for China to take on greater responsibility, transparency and restraint for its nuclear weapons arsenal,” the U.S. official said.

The Biden administration is not interested in holding an extension of New START hostage to China, however, the official said, especially given that Moscow’s arsenal “is at least 10 times the size of China’s.”

In October, Russia expressed a willingness to freeze its overall number of nuclear warheads during talks with Billingslea — a move Biden officials said was a “positive development” they hoped to build on, even though details on verification had not been hammered out.

On Sunday, Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, called for the immediate release of Navalny, the Russian opposition leader detained in Moscow. Navalny had just returned home after receiving medical treatment in Germany following a poisoning attack this summer. Russian authorities put out a warrant for his arrest, claiming he had violated the terms of a previous sentence related to embezzlement charges.

“Mr. Navalny should be immediately released, and the perpetrators of the outrageous attack on his life must be held accountable,” Sullivan wrote on Twitter. “The Kremlin’s attacks on Mr. Navalny are not just a violation of human rights, but an affront to the Russian people who want their voices heard.”

The Biden administration’s ability to work with Russia on arms control while confronting it on a range of other issues will be tested almost immediately.


For reference, the US State Department website has the figures on the number of weapons involved.


New START, Explained

    Article 
After Joe Biden secured the state of Pennsylvania and became the president-elect, the nuclear non-proliferation community released a sigh of relief. Many hope that President Donald Trump’s threat of a new nuclear arms race, his unproductive Singapore Summit with North Korea’s Kim Jung-un in 2018, and his pulling out of the Iran Deal will give way to a more predictable and stable nuclear posture under President Biden.

But even with Biden at the helm on January 20, New START, America’s last remaining nuclear treaty with the Russian Federation, is set to expire February 5, 2021. That’s less than 16 days after Biden enters the White House.

There were many issues at the top of Americans' minds as they stood at the polls to cast their ballots. For Black Americans, Latinx people, and other people of color whose votes proved decisive in this year’s election, it was race, immigration, the economy, and other dinner table issues. And while many commentators did worry out loud about the fact that Trump had first strike authority, New START likely wasn’t at the top of most Americans’ list.

But it should be. Nuclear arms treaties are essential to a safer, more stable world.

Moscow and Washington are at a crossroads when it comes to non-proliferation and arms reduction that arguably is as critical as the late 1980s when Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) in 1991. Many credit Gorbachev—who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his hand in escorting the USSR and U.S. out of the Cold War—and Reagan’s summits and negotiations over the years for staving off a third World War. While U.S.-Russia relations aren’t at Cold War levels, non-proliferation is at a very critical moment between the two nations that possess more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons. As Biden prepares to occupy the White House, he will not have the amenable Gorbachev with whom to negotiate the next major reduction in deployed warheads and, hopefully, cuts in nuclear stockpiles. Vladimir Putin has been busy trying to reestablish Russia as a military power, and bolstering its nuclear arsenal is certainly central to that aim.

What is New START, and what purpose does it serve?

New START is an arms treaty that limits the number of deployed strategic warheads to 1,550, a decrease of two-thirds from the first treaty signed by George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev in July of 1991. (Click here to learn what a warhead is) It doesn’t, however, limit the number of inactive, stockpiled warheads on either side.

Warheads are deployed on submarines carrying submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and heavy bombers. The basic idea is that, in the unfortunate event that either Moscow or Washington decides on a nuclear strike, both sides will know that no more than 1,550 warheads will be used against them. Not that it really takes that many to do the job, but you get the idea.

A key component of New START is the remote and satellite monitoring, as well as the required 18 site visits per year to verify the warhead limits.

Lynn Rusten, Vice President of the Global Nuclear Policy program at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, worked on START I and said that the inspection process is very intrusive and that New START is even more strict than its first iteration. For example, she said that the original START I was an attribution system. So, for example, if there was a ballistic missile, it would be attributed with six warheads. All you were really verifying was the number of missiles, and then you'd mathematically calculate the number of warheads.

Under New START, it's actual warheads. If the Americans sent a team to a Russian ICBM base, they would get to know where all the missiles are and how many warheads are on each one. The American inspector can say, ‘I want (to see) missile silo number 10.’ The Russians would drive the team out to that missile, take off the nose cone, and the inspectors actually get to count the number of warheads. They're covered with a soft cover, so you don't see the warheads, but you see the bumps. They get to count how many warheads are literally on that missile.

It's an incredible amount of insight into Russia's nuclear systems and their operational practices, said Rusten. The same with the submarines. They pull the submarine into port, the inspectors randomly select which of the tubes they're going to pull a missile up from, and then they count the warheads on it.

“You can't see that from overhead satellites,” Rusten, who has been part of U.S. verification teams, said. “It's not replaceable if we don't have boots on the ground. That's what people lose sight of. It gives our military planners a lot of confidence about what Russia has and what we need to plan against. If we didn't have this information, over time, we would become less and less certain about what their nuclear forces look like, where they were, what they were doing."

How long does it take to negotiate a treaty?

It takes a long time, and negotiations are pretty complicated, according to Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova, Director, International Organizations and Nonproliferation Program at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non‑Proliferation.

Usually, the United States and Russia meet in person. The delegations would comprise representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation and the U.S. State Department and defense representatives from both sides. Very often, those negotiations would take place in Geneva and could last for months. Initially, they would have meetings to just get things started. But once the negotiation is really in progress, they could spend months meeting and drafting texts. There might be fairly large delegations and a lot of support from back home nailing down details.

All of this is done behind closed doors, with the public knowing little about the back-and-forth between negotiators.

What has been unusual about the approach of the outgoing Trump Administration is they announce ambitious goals and talk about the U.S. conditions and demands publicly (including on social media)—which traditionally never happens—and, then, there's no actual negotiation. With the current White House, Mukhatzhanova said, it's not clear how much work is actually being put into the technical preparations. When Russia called for a five-year extension—which they shortened to one year because of the stalled talks—the Americans appeared to drag their feet and seemed unwilling to commit to working out the differences in their respective approaches.

(Biden has said he would accept Russia’s extension conditions)

Part of what held up talks was the Trump administration’s curious demand that China be added to the treaty. Mukhatzhanova told me it doesn’t make sense, especially since Moscow and Washington are in the middle of negotiating conditions between themselves.

“Furthermore, China’s arsenal looks very different from the U.S. and Russian arsenals,” she said. “It's much smaller. In fact, they don't even have warheads deployed in the same sense as the U.S. and Russian warheads. They keep their warheads decoupled from missiles, which has implications for how you count and what is being limited. The only possible positive outcome of including China would be China having to declare its arsenal, declare the numbers of missiles it has which it has never done before. China was very clear they were not going to join the treaty (unless the U.S. reduces its arsenal to the size of China’s). If you want China joining arms control talks in general as a precondition for the extension of New START, that's very strange because New START is a bilateral treaty.”

(Click here to learn more about China’s nuclear arsenal)

Again, how long these treaties take to negotiate depends on who the world leaders are, what terms both sides want, and how reasonable they are at the negotiating table.

Why don’t Russia and the United States just get rid of all of their nukes?

That would be ideal, but there are too many interests involved—including Lockheed Martin’s, Northrop Grumman’s, and other war machine contractors' who make up the military-industrial complex—for that to happen easily.

Barack Obama entered office in 2009 with a mandate to abolish nuclear weapons. It was a noble goal, but one Republicans in Congress were completely against. There was no collective political will or ideological outlook that could envision a world without nuclear weapons. You also had a more expansionist Putin who was expanding the Kremlin’s regional influence by invading Ukraine in 2014 and supporting the Assad regime in Syria. Consequently, Obama’s administration saw fewer reductions of the stockpile than past administrations.

“It's going to take some very wise and thoughtful leadership at the highest levels,” Togzhan Kassenova, a nonresident fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment, said. “We had it in Obama, but we didn't have a proper counterpart on the Russian side for that. For example, like what the Soviet Union had with Mikhail Gorbachev. So, somebody like Gorbachev on the Russian side, and somebody like Obama on the U.S. side. But also the military-industrial complex would need to do some soul searching.”

Northrop Grumman is expected to make $85 billion developing the next generation of ICBMs, and other military contractors are profiting from producing weapons as Americans are waiting for Congress to provide relatively modest monthly stimulus checks during the pandemic. If profit is prioritized over peace and if leadership believes that maintaining the military-industrial complex is central to a safer world, then abolishing nukes will be incredibly difficult.

What will a new New START look like?

It’s not possible to know that at this point.

But many experts agree that president-elect Biden would bring back a more traditional, less erratic approach to negotiating such treaties. But the downside is that Biden will likely not have much time to negotiate a new treaty and may be able just to extend the current one.

Without New START, Gaukhar says there would be no rules by which either side has to abide. And that could very well trigger an arms race.

“We would have for the first time in decades a situation where there is no bilateral nuclear arms control between the U.S. and Russia,” she said. “There would be no treaty obliging either side to report on any part of their nuclear arsenal. There would be no verification, no inspections, no neutral reporting, and no legally binding limitations on the number of weapons on each side. We've seen qualitative improvements in the arsenals, especially the Russian arsenal in the past decade or so. And the United States has started its own modernization efforts. It's very expensive, but, so far, it's really been focused on qualitative. But if we allow the last treaty limiting strategic nuclear weapons to expire, we could see a quantitative build-up and that's destabilizing and increases risks. That's something that American taxpayers should also consider. The expenditure on nuclear weapons is already humongous.

The modernization Gaukhar discusses was approved by Obama before he left office and is projected to cost well over $1 trillion over 30 years. When she says qualitative modernization, she means updating the current arsenal, not adding more weapons to it.

What is promising is that anything is possible. Relations between Moscow and Washington are tense but not at Cold War levels. There were upwards of 70,000 warheads in the world as recently as the late 1980s. There are around 13,500 at present. So there is much room to feel optimistic.

That said, no one knows what will happen with New START or how non-proliferation talks between Moscow and Washington will go. But a new White House with experience in these matters may bring forth a positive outcome that both America and the Russian Federation would welcome.

One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.
TuefelHundenIV Night Clerk of the Apocalypse from Doomsday Facility Corner Store. Since: Aug, 2009 Relationship Status: I'd need a PowerPoint presentation
Night Clerk of the Apocalypse
#60580: Jan 22nd 2021 at 11:08:30 PM

Good luck to Biden on getting the Russians onboard.

Who watches the watchmen?
Imca (Veteran)
#60581: Jan 23rd 2021 at 2:56:04 AM

Doesn't it kinda benefit the Russians more then the Americans any way? Cold war definitively showed that in any kind of arms race the US is going to win out.

Not that the deal isn't better for every one involed, but restrictions of those sorts are better for the side that cant just win the race then those that can.... See how much Italy benefited under the WNT compared to say... England, neither had to worry about bankrupting themselfs on battleships any more, but one came out hitting well above its weight class.

AFP Since: Mar, 2010
#60582: Jan 23rd 2021 at 3:18:25 AM

Spangdahlem Air Base gets new ultrasonic rifle cleaning machines

Ignore the click-bait headline about the Army not liking it because it's "too good." Basically they're concerned about whether or not the machine also cleans off the anti-corrosive coating. The company claims that the ultrasonic lubing process negates that concern anyways. Guess we'll figure out in time either way.

eagleoftheninth Shop all day, greed is free from a dreamed portrait, imperfect Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: With my statistically significant other
Shop all day, greed is free
#60583: Jan 23rd 2021 at 3:34:35 AM

Neat, I've got a similar thingy at my workplace. Don't forget your ear pro and don't put your finger into the thing when it's on, no matter how much it looks like a comfy bubbly bath.

One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.
AFP Since: Mar, 2010
#60584: Jan 23rd 2021 at 3:41:01 AM

The glasses shop at the BX on my base has a little ultrasonic glasses cleaner they let you use for free. As far as I can tell, it's just a little tub of cleaning solution with a motor under it that makes it go buzz. Not even sure if it's actually ultrasonic or if it just works by old fashioned agitation like a washing machine.

TairaMai rollin' on dubs from El Paso Tx Since: Jul, 2011 Relationship Status: Mu
rollin' on dubs
#60585: Jan 23rd 2021 at 4:57:06 PM

As far as I can tell, the old farts at TACOM are still hung up on using elbow grease and CLP to clean weapons - despite many units having cleaning machines (although some were removed). In basic our company had a cleaning machine - the Drill Sergeant Nasty stood over me as I cleaned my weapon, then made sure I put CLP on it so the action was butter smooth.

TACOM always freaks out over a nothingburger. A few years ago it was MAGPUL magazines. Supposedly they did something that caused TACOM to say that brand wasn't authorized. A statement they had to walk back as many Joes either bought them (many shooting teams that use the AR swear by the brand) and the company pushed back.

I suspect they are all huffy about older machines, using ultrasonic cleaners in place of actual cleaning or using machines that were not made specifically for weapons.

I tried to walk like an Egyptian and now I need to see a Cairo practor....
TheWildWestPyro from Seattle, WA Since: Sep, 2012 Relationship Status: Healthy, deeply-felt respect for this here Shotgun
#60586: Jan 24th 2021 at 1:13:09 PM

There is an American-Iraqi war movie about Iraqi SWAT in Mosul, which was released in 2019 and is very well done:

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Jan 24th 2021 at 1:14:17 AM

MarkVonLewis Since: Jun, 2010
#60587: Jan 24th 2021 at 3:01:14 PM

I guaren-goddamn-tee the first time they fire that LTAMDS radar it's gonna pop a SCN or STR fault. [lol]

Taira: no offense but that does not look cool; it looks like some drew fanart of the PATRIOT radar with a penis. [lol]

Edited by MarkVonLewis on Jan 24th 2021 at 6:03:11 AM

eagleoftheninth Shop all day, greed is free from a dreamed portrait, imperfect Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: With my statistically significant other
Shop all day, greed is free
#60588: Jan 24th 2021 at 6:44:54 PM

For Wars of the Future, Pentagon Looks to Distant Past: the B-52.

    Article 
OVER THE EAST CHINA SEA—“Go back,” the Chinese air controller warned. “You are now approaching Chinese airspace. Turn around immediately or you will be intercepted.”

The crew of the B-52 lumbering 100 miles off China’s coast rebuffed the warning that crackled through the radio, and the 60-year-old aircraft stayed its course.

This was a bomber presence mission, a taxing flight designed to demonstrate the U.S. military’s long reach and uphold the right of international passage in disputed airspace.

It was also a window into the Pentagon’s plan to rely on aircraft from the earliest days of the Cold War to prepare for the wars of the future.

The February mission began at dawn at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam when the aircrew donned oxygen masks and “poopy suits,” puffy outer garments to keep out the cold in case the plane was forced to ditch in the ocean.

Then the bomber, far older than the crew flying it, rumbled down the runway, relying on analog dials and aging radar to zigzag over the Pacific and maneuver inside the “air defense identification zone” that China has declared but the U.S. refuses to acknowledge.

After nearly two decades of waging counterinsurgency warfare in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the Defense Department has turned its focus to “great power competition,” its buzz phrase for a major shift in spending and programs to counter China and Russia.

The retooling is a costly reckoning for a military that was stretched by fighting militant groups and focusing on lesser dangers posed by rogue states in northeast Asia and the Middle East. The strategy has been broadly embraced by Lloyd Austin, President Biden’s defense secretary, who must now find a way to resource it.

The Marines are getting rid of their tanks and instead are developing the ability to operate from western Pacific islands to bottle up China’s fleet. The Army recently conducted tests of its ability to harness artificial intelligence and a network of sensors to take the fight to its foes. The Navy is pursuing the development of unmanned ships.

The strategic pivot, however, has been a particular boon for long-range bombers, which the U.S. is using to signal that it can project power around the globe as Covid-19 hobbles the home front.

To sneak through sophisticated enemy air defenses, the service is developing the futuristic B-21 “Raider” bomber: a stealthy flying wing. To fill out its fleet, it is also counting on the B-52 Stratofortress, an aircraft designed in 1948 with a slide rule.

“It is like an old truck that was built when they actually built them tough,” said Gen. Charles Q. Brown, the Air Force’s chief of staff and a former commander of its forces in the Pacific. “The challenge you have with a platform like that now is how to bring in new technology and capability.”

Like an old house getting an extreme makeover, the plane’s durable air frame will be preserved while its fuel-guzzling engines, vintage radios, analog instrument dials and internal weapons bay are replaced with the most modern systems.

So essential is the B-52 to the Air Force’s long-term plans that 76 of them will fly until at least 2050. By then, the youngest will be nearly 90 years old. Some generals say the plane might live to celebrate its centennial, besides outlasting the hairdo named for it in the 1960s, which was later made a band name.

How the Air Force has come to rely on such an unorthodox solution for the coming decades is the product of decisions made years ago when the Pentagon assumed the Cold War was over and then spent years fighting militants in the Middle East.

The reliance on the vintage bomber also reflects the lengths the Pentagon has gone to reorient itself for a world of great-power conflict, as it struggles to maintain its inventory while simultaneously pursuing cutting-edge technology in the face of a mounting federal deficit.

Conceived at the dawn of the nuclear age, the B-52 had an original role of deterring, and if need be fighting, a nuclear war. The eight-engine plane, with a wingspan almost two-thirds the length of a football field, was nicknamed the BUFF, which in polite company stands for the “Big Ugly Fat Fellow.”

In the 1960s, a dozen B-52s loaded with nuclear weapons were kept on continuous airborne alert, their bellies painted glossy white to reflect the heat of a potential nuclear blast, under a mission code-named “Chrome Dome.”

“It was designed to withstand the stresses and strains of combat in a nuclear-weapons environment,” said Mark Gunzinger, a former B-52 pilot who now directs the nonpartisan Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Nonnuclear conflicts gave the B-52 a combat role. Designed to carry two nuclear bombs, it was refurbished to hold 60,000 pounds of conventional bombs in the Vietnam War.

The development of air-launched cruise missiles provided B-52s with what the Pentagon calls a “standoff” capability, a means of launching weapons from a safe distance. The B-52 took on that role at the start of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and the plane became a platform for dropping satellite-guided bombs on militants in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, including the battle that retook Mosul from Islamic State.

While it was able to adapt, other bomber programs ran into headwinds. The first replacement for the B-52 was supposed to be the B-70, which was intended to fly very fast and high but was scratched after the Soviet Union oriented its air defenses on that threat.

The Air Force developed B-1B “Lancer” bombers, which were designed to fly low with their adjustable wings swept back but took on unanticipated stress when used in high-altitude missions in Afghanistan and the Mideast with their wings forward.

Stealthy B-2 “Spirit” bombers the Air Force developed used cutting-edge technology, but the program was slashed to 21 aircraft from an original 132 when tensions with Moscow eased and budgets tightened, pushing the cost of each copy above $2 billion.

Pentagon disputes, meanwhile, delayed development of a Next Generation Bomber. Concerned that the Air Force’s proposal could lead to spiraling costs, Defense Secretary Robert Gates sent it back to the drawing board in 2009 and told the Air Force to stick to proven technology.

In 2018, growing friction with a rising China and renewed tensions with Russia changed Pentagon thinking and led Jim Mattis, by then the defense secretary, to identify the two nations as the U.S.’s principal threats for decades to come.

The strategic shift gave a boost to the development of an array of air war systems, among them “loyal wingman” drones that would fly in formation with piloted jets. It also was the beginning of a new golden age for long-range bombers.

Air Force generals last year called for the service to have at least 220 bombers for conventional missions, while sustaining the nuclear triad that includes long-range bombers plus land- and submarine-based missiles. The bomber goal meant a big jump from the 158 planes in the current fleet.

The Air Force moved ahead with a new bomber called the B-21, which is expected to begin entering the service’s inventory in the middle to late 2020s. It is hoping to field at least 100 of them. To sustain its bomber fleet, the service decided to extend the life of its B-52s while saving funds by gradually phasing out its tiny fleet of B-2s and battle-weary B-1Bs.

“Part of the reason the Air Force is so dependent on B-52 modernization is that other proposed successors did not work out along the way,” said Jeremiah Gertler, the military aviation analyst for the Congressional Research Service. “The Air Force decided it needed capacity more than capability.”

The B-52 is a plane with no hope of evading stiff antiaircraft defenses. And its fuel-guzzling engines were no longer made, requiring the Air Force to rely on a dwindling reserve of engines and parts.

The plane, however, could fire long-range missiles and carry satellite-guided bombs and mines. And alone among current Air Force bombers, it could be equipped with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, its sole remaining nuclear capability.

The B-52s had another advantage: They had been bought and paid for, at an original cost of a little more than $6 million apiece.

“You can’t even buy a Learjet for that these days,” said Alan Williams, a former B-52 radar navigator who now is the B-52 deputy program manager at the Air Force’s Global Strike Command.

By overhauling the bomb bay, the Air Force saw ways to boost the B-52s’ firepower further. That would enable them to carry eight precision-guided weapons internally plus the 12 they can lug on their wings. With new pylons, they could also carry superfast hypersonic missiles the service is developing that are projected to travel 1,000 miles.

Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC, General Electric Co. ’s GE Aviation and the Pratt & Whitney unit of Raytheon Technologies Corp. are competing for the contract to sell 608 new engines for the B-52, which would cost billions but are projected to save money in fuel.

So by the late 2030s, the U.S. bomber fleet will be made up of polar opposites: The sleek B-21, designed to slip past enemy air defenses, and the ungainly B-52, which presents a huge cross section to enemy radar but can lob ordnance from afar.

The U.S. strategy faces an array of challenges, including a potential flare-up with Iran that would distract the Pentagon from its “great power” mission. Mr. Gertler also suggested the Pentagon might rethink its decision to keep extending the life of the B-52 in the mid-2030s and channel the savings toward buying more B-21s.

For now, however, the B-52, which stood alert in the Cuban missile crisis and proved its utility in conflicts from Vietnam to Afghanistan, appears poised to survive the toughest confrontation of all: the Pentagon budget wars.

“We are a bomb truck,” said Lt. Col. Dennis Zabka, the squadron commander and the senior officer on the Guam flight. “We carry the widest variety of munitions of any aircraft.”

In late August, a B-52 hit turbulence over the Black Sea, a fault line between the West and Russia, when a Russian Su-27 fighter flew within 100 feet. A week later, two B-52s made a statement of their own by circling over the Ukrainian coast, not far from the Russian-held Crimean peninsula.

On Jan. 17, a pair of B-52s flew from the U.S. to the Persian Gulf and back in a nonstop flight intended to deter Iran—a mission the bombers have carried out five times in recent months.

And in the western Pacific, B-52s have been a key part of the jostling as Beijing seeks to expand its sphere of influence and Washington aims to preserve its role as the region’s pre-eminent military power.

China has tried to drive American forces from near its shores, shadowing Navy ships in the South China Sea and demanding that U.S. military aircraft avoid a Chinese self-declared air identification zone extending 200 miles into the East China Sea. The zone covers islands known as the Senkaku in Japan that are held by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing.

Guam is a crucial U.S. outpost in this contest. The Air Force is adding fortified bunkers to Munitions Storage Area One at Andersen, making it one of the service’s largest bomb and missile storage facilities. The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command is proposing to build a $1.6 billion air defense network on the island to supplement the Thaad antimissile system deployed there in 2014.

Some of the defenses are more rudimentary: Traps baited with mice safeguard Andersen’s runways to keep brown tree snakes from slithering on to the airfield.

It was from there that the 69th Bomb Squadron, whose home base is Minot, N.D., set out on a mission to fly through what China considers its air zone.

After climbing into an unarmed B-52 named “Christine,” crew members strapped their legs, waist and chest into their seats, fastened their helmets and connected their oxygen supply.

They pulled out pins with a red lanyard from each arm of the seat, removing the safety so they could eject if they had to. As the plane flew north toward Japan, the crew used its decades-old radio to check in with air traffic controllers in San Francisco and Japan before pivoting southwest toward China.

The crew was ready with a scripted reply when a Chinese air controller warned the B-52 it would be intercepted: “I am a United States military aircraft conducting lawful military activities in international airspace.” No intercept occurred.

At the end of the 12-hour flight, the crew’s first stop was to the maintenance squadron, which worked through the night to get the old plane ready for its next mission.

The adaptability of the B-52 has surprised former Defense Secretary Gates, who as a boy used to watch the planes from a nearby Boeing factory fly over his family’s house in Wichita, Kan. “Who knew that 60 years later, the damn thing would still be flying?” he said.

One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.
dRoy Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar from Most likely from my study Since: May, 2010 Relationship Status: I'm just high on the world
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
#60589: Jan 24th 2021 at 10:57:52 PM

Random WWII-era US Navy question.

If there was a fifth fleet admiral post-war, who would've been the most likely candidate?

Maybe Spruance?

Continuously reading, studying, and (hopefully) growing.
TuefelHundenIV Night Clerk of the Apocalypse from Doomsday Facility Corner Store. Since: Aug, 2009 Relationship Status: I'd need a PowerPoint presentation
Night Clerk of the Apocalypse
#60590: Jan 25th 2021 at 4:44:11 AM

The link in the early part about the Marines ditching their armor just reminds me the current Commandant is an idiot who is ignoring history. I am tickled to no end to think the Marines supposed future mission is "to bottle up the Chinese Navy".

Who watches the watchmen?
nrjxll Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Not war
#60591: Jan 25th 2021 at 5:45:04 AM

...Do I take it you were in one of the other three branches, then?

Edited by nrjxll on Jan 25th 2021 at 7:45:13 AM

MarkVonLewis Since: Jun, 2010
#60592: Jan 25th 2021 at 8:22:16 AM

Tuef: or maybe the Marines' new mission is support the local single moms? [lol]

TheWildWestPyro from Seattle, WA Since: Sep, 2012 Relationship Status: Healthy, deeply-felt respect for this here Shotgun
HallowHawk Since: Feb, 2013
#60594: Jan 25th 2021 at 10:32:20 AM

For Commonwealth of Nations militaries (UK, Australia, and Canada as major examples) from what I understand, "Lieutenant" is turned into "Leftenant" there but, when writing a line where someone of the rank identifies himself or herself, should it be written "Lieutenant" or "Leftenant" regardless of spelling?

The line I have in question is "This is Lieutenant [insert surname]".

Edited by HallowHawk on Jan 26th 2021 at 2:33:46 AM

Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#60595: Jan 25th 2021 at 10:42:27 AM

It’s one spelling, two ways of pronouncing it.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
HallowHawk Since: Feb, 2013
#60596: Jan 25th 2021 at 10:45:59 AM

So it's still "Lieutenant" if you're writing a story involving the Canadian military?

LeGarcon Blowout soon fellow Stalker from Skadovsk Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Gay for Big Boss
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
#60597: Jan 25th 2021 at 10:46:48 AM

Yes though I'm unsure if Canada pronounces it wrong or not.

Oh really when?
nrjxll Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Not war
#60598: Jan 25th 2021 at 12:56:21 PM

Nah, he's still a Marine.

Ah, so it's less an interservice rivalry thing than a "I laugh so I don't cry" thing.

Edited by nrjxll on Jan 25th 2021 at 2:56:31 PM

Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#60599: Jan 25th 2021 at 1:09:23 PM

I thought once a person was a marine they were always a marine? Something about it being impossible to remove the crayons post-insertion?

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Protagonist506 from Oregon Since: Dec, 2013 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#60600: Jan 25th 2021 at 1:14:30 PM

Usually, an "Ex-Marine" implies dishonor, like assassinating JFK or being a terrible war criminal.

Leviticus 19:34

Total posts: 68,250
Top