War Is Boring

F-22. Air Force photo.

F-22 Raptor stealth fighters at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia have been grounded after a pilot experienced oxygen loss in mid-flight. It’s the second stand-down this year for the U.S. military’s most sophisticated dogfighter, and a foreboding sign for the Pentagon as it struggles to modernize its aerial armada.

Problems with the on-board oxygen system have vexed the $150-million-a-copy F-22 for more than a year. On May 3, the Air Force locked down the entire Raptor fleet while it investigated reports of pilot blackouts and disorientation — problems that might have contributed to a fatal F-22 crash in Alaska in November.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

USS Florida. Navy photo.

On March 19, the guided-missile submarine Florida fired more than 90 of the roughly 120 Tomahawk cruise missiles that took down Libyan air defenses, clearing the way for NATO strike planes. It was the major-combat debut for America’s fleet of “SSGN” subs. Each of the four vessels packs up to 154 Tomahawks, making them some of the world’s most powerful warships.

But there’s a problem. The SSGNs, commissioned in the last five years, are actually modified ballistic-missile submarines dating from the 1980s. Around 2026, their nuclear power cores will wear out. At that point, the Navy must replace the subs … or lose a huge portion of its missile firepower. But building new submarines the size of the SSGNs could cost up to $8 billion apiece, nearly half what the Navy spends on ships every year. In other words, way too much.

Fortunately, Electric Boat in Connecticut, the Navy’s main submarine-builder, has a plan. Instead of designing new SSGNs from scratch, Electric Boat intends to pack the current Virginia-class attack submarines with extra missiles — and give them new eyes and ears in the form of sophisticated underwater and flying robots. The meaner, smarter Virginias wouldn’t carry as many missiles as today’s SSGNs, but at just $2 billion a pop, the Navy could afford many more of them.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Song-class submarine.

It was the U.S. Navy’s biggest jolt in years. On October 26, 2006, a Chinese Song-class attack submarine quietly surfaced within nine miles of the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk as the 80,000-ton-diplacement vessel sailed on a training exercise in the East China Sea between Japan and Taiwan.

The Song-class vessel, displacing 2,200 tons, was close enough to hit the Kitty Hawk with one of its 18 homing torpedoes. None of the carrier’s roughly dozen escorting warships detected the Song until it breached the surface.

The Song’s provocative appearance was, for the Americans, “as big a shock as the Russians launching Sputnik,” one NATO official told Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper, referring to the Soviet Union’s launch of the first-ever space satellite in 1957. “This could well have escalated into something that was very unforeseen,” said Adm. Bill Fallon, then commander of U.S. Pacific forces.

The incident underscored the then explosive growth of the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s undersea force, as well as Beijing’s apparent intention to wrestle the Western Pacific away from the once-dominant U.S. Navy. “The Chinese are building a credible submarine force which will make it very difficult for the U.S. Navy to maintain sea control dominance in or near coastal waters off of China,” warned Rear Adm. Hank McKinney, former commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s submarine force.

Of particular concern to American defense officials was the projected introduction, over the coming decade, of up to 20 new nuclear-powered attack submarines, known as “SSNs,” that are an order of magnitude more capable than the Song class. “The acquisition of increasing numbers of SSNs would give it (the PLAN) the ability to contest U.S. naval forces farther from China’s shores,” Thomas Mahnken wrote in China’s Future Nuclear Submarine Force, edited by Naval War College professor Andrew Erickson and published in 2007.

Yet nearly five years later, McKinney’s and Mahnken’s alarm has been proved false. The PLAN still possesses a tiny number of nuclear-powered submarines. The Songs and other short-range diesel boats remain the backbone of China’s undersea force. Beijing’s production of new submarines has declined andthe PLAN’s overall undersea fleet is likely to contract in coming years. “I don’t think they know whether they want to make the full-up commitment it would take to do this (submarine) thing right,” Owen Cote, Jr., an analyst at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says of the Chinese.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy and its Pacific allies have crafted plans to stabilize or even grow their own submarine fleets. In 2006, Western observers feared the undersea balance of power in the Pacific would tilt. In a sense, they were right. It has tilted – back towards the United States and its allies.

How that happened speaks volumes about China’s evolution as a regional power.

Read the rest at The Diplomat.

USS Bunker Hill. Navy photo.

Budget reductions have forced the U.S. Navy to consider reducing the number of surface warships. The cuts could include vessels devoted to missile defense – once a sacrosanct mission for the world’s most powerful navy.

Navy planners have drafted an alternative five-year budget that could go into effect if President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress decide to seek further spending reductions on top of the $40-billion-a-year savings agreed upon earlier this year.

The alternative plan would decommission nine 1980s vintage Ticonderoga-class cruisers from the current force of 22. The cuts would take effect in 2013 and 2014. With their 35-year service lives, the cruisers were originally planned to leave active service sometime in the 2020s.

Read the rest at The Diplomat.

Bryan William Jones photo.

I’m quoted in Guy Taylor’s piece on the prospects for a U.S. drone campaign against the Lord’s Resistance Army in Congo:

“At first glance, I doubt that Congo is a good venue for a drone campaign for reasons of terrain,” said Axe, who added that while drone censors capable of penetrating the extremely dense tree canopy offered by the forests of Central Africa do exist, they are “fairly rare and very expensive.”

“This is still one of the places where the fighting needs to be done by people, up close,” he said. “The terrain is nothing like the areas where drones have been used successfully in East Africa, Central Asia or Iraq.”

Army photo.

The Pentagon could be in a race to prevent a major rebel attack on African civilians, aid groups believe. That’s one disturbing possibility behind President Barack Obama’s announcement of a new U.S. military mission to Central Africa.

On Friday, Obama informed Congress of the deployment of around 100 “combat-equipped” U.S. troops to help the Ugandan army track down rebel leader Joseph Kony and his cultish Lord’s Resistance Army, currently hiding out somewhere in South Sudan, northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo and southern Central African Republic. The first group of Americans is already on the ground in Uganda.

Obama’s announcement raised more questions than it answered. The U.S. has been quietly involved in the war on the LRA for several years, even helping the Ugandans plan a 2009 raid that missed Kony and sparked a bloody LRA reprisal. So why make such a big deal out of the latest effort? Could the new deployment represent the beginning of another U.S. “shadow war” waged by commandos and killer drones?

And why now? The LRA has been raping and pillaging across Central Africa for 20 years. What, besides a widely-ignored 2010 law, compelled Washington to try again to defeat the group?

Read the rest at Danger Room.

CV-22. Air Force photo.

The V-22 Osprey tiltrotor flown by the Marines and Air Force crashes or burns much more often than the military cares to admit. But that hasn’t stopped Osprey-maker Boeing from pitching a new tiltrotor for an ambitious Army program aimed at replacing almost everything the ground combat branch flies … with a single aircraft design.

That’s potentially thousands of new tiltrotors, which take off vertically like helicopters but fly fast like airplanes, thanks to their rotating engine nacelles — but which are also vulnerable to dangerous aerodynamic phenomena and, in the V-22’s case, have been plagued by engine problems.

By continuing to invest in the V-22, the Pentagon is doubling down on a risky bet. If Boeing’s “son of Osprey” gets the greenlight for the comprehensive Joint Multi-Role program, the military will be going all in. But a lot could change between now and 2025, when the first of the new rotorcraft is (loosely) scheduled to enter service. And there’s reason to believe a new tiltrotor could avoid the pitfalls of the Osprey’s design.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Getty photo.

The nuclear-powered submarine USS Florida was lying in wait, quietly submerged off the Libyan coast, when the order came from then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to launch its cruise missiles.

It was the evening of March 19. Two days before, the U.N. Security Council had unanimously voted to approve Resolution 1973, authorizing a no-fly zone over Libya aimed at protecting civilians against the forces of Moammar Gadhafi’s repressive regime. To clear the way for the no-fly zone, the U.S. Navy and Royal Navy prepared a barrage of more than 100 precision-guided Tomahawk cruise missiles.

With a capacity of 154 Tomahawks, the Florida — a former ballistic-missile boat converted to non-nuclear missiles in 2006 — was by far the most powerful Tomahawk shooter off Libya. The night of March 19 she fired no fewer than 90 Tomahawks, with deadly accuracy. “I could see their professionalism and determination in their faces,” Chief Fire Control Technician Lee Taylor, from Florida‘s strike fire control division, said of his sailors. They hunched over their consoles, carefully managing the underwater missile launches over a period of hours.

Read the rest at AOL Defense.

The Frog. EPA photo.

Central America
Rains and mudslides created by a tropical depression swept into the region last week, killing 81 people from Nicaragua to southeastern Mexico. “The situation has got even worse, it’s still raining heavily in various parts of the country,” Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes said. El Salvador bore the brunt of the damage: 32 people died and more than 20,000 people were evacuated. Neighboring Guatemala was also hit hard where at least 28 people died. A blackout in Guatemala City forced hundreds to shelter in shopping malls and contributed to an “atmosphere of chaos.” Evacuations were reported as far south as Costa Rica.

Related, Category Two Hurricane Jova made landfall off Mexico’s southwestern coast early last week. Six people were killed as the storm threatened to disrupt the Friday opening of the Pan American Games in Guadalajara. The games kicked off without major problems, however, with much attention paid to the heavy security presence.

Mexico
The capture of Zetas third-in-command Carlos “La Rana” Oliva Castillo (or “The Frog”) lead headines of an already busy week in Mexico. Castillo was seized Wednesday by the Mexican army at a safehouse in Saltillo, southwest of the Monterrey metropolitan area. Zetas gunmen reportedly attacked army troops in the city following Castillo’s capture in an unsuccessful attempt to free him — “a sign of his importance to the criminal organization,” the AP paraphrased Mexican army spokesperson Col. Ricardo Trevilla. Castillo is accused of ordering an arson attack in August on a Monterrey casino that killed 52 people.

In northern Nuevo Leon state, Mexican security forces seized a Zetas cell believed to coordinate the cartel’s operations in several cities there. The military also rescued 61 men held as forced laborers by the Zetas in the border city of Piedras Negras. Elsewhere, a prison riot in Matamoros between rival gangs left at least 20 inmates dead. In other news, Colombian newspaper El Tiempo revealed the Zetas had received “training in command and intelligence operations” from veterans of Colombia’s special forces. The men — two majors and two non-commissioned officers — are said to have gone into the freelance business after being released from a military prison in 2005.

Also, outgoing Mexican President Felipe Calderon defended his government’s security strategy in Saturday’s New York Times, accused his rivals in the Institutional Revolutionary Party of corruption, and said his legacy will not be one of surging violence. “It’s possible some will remember me for that or will want me to be remembered for that,” Calderon said. “But if Mexico triumphs as I am sure it will, if Mexico has new institutions in the future, if Mexico subdues the criminals, if Mexico reconstructs its social fabric there will also be those that remember me as the president who dared to take on the criminals and indicate the long path of institutional reconstruction of the country.”

CV-22. Air Force photo.

For the crew of U.S. Air Force CV-22 Osprey number 06-0031, a lot of things went wrong on the early morning of April 9, 2010, in southern Afghanistan. A series of alleged pilot errors and possible mechanical failures sent the speedy, hybrid aircraft — which takes off and lands like a helicopter but cruises like an airplane — crashing to the ground.

Four people died.

The loss of 06-0031 was a tragedy for the victims and their families. It was also problematic for proponents of the controversial Osprey. In recent years, elements within the U.S. military have worked hard to portray the V-22 as safe, reliable and combat-ready. The Afghanistan crash threatened to undermine that effort.

Which perhaps explains why the Air Force appeared to cover up the possible real cause of 06-0031’s deadly mishap. The lead investigator, Brig. Gen Donald Harvel, claimed that the V-22 suffered engine problems before its crash. Then Harvel’s superior officer overruled the initial decision, chalking up the accident mostly to pilot error. That took the heat off the Osprey itself.

“There was absolutely a lot of pressure to change my report,” he told Air Force Times, adding that the flying branch was focused on protecting the V-22’s reputation.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Dick Spivey, one of the main advocates of the V-22 during its decades of troubled development, has apparently written a comment on my Opsrey coverage, insisting that my coverage is not worth commenting on. Do I have to explain why that’s so funny?

Oh — and if the commenter is not really Dick Spivey, then my apologies!

David,

No wonder you got very little blowback. Your story wasn’t worth commenting on. You just rehashed all the old stuff that critics have been using for years. There just wasn’t any new news to consider. I am amazed that magazines pay for articles like that.

Cheers,

Dick