The sun has been rising from the North for quite some time on the NATO land. Since mid-2009, the chair of NATO secretary general has been occupied by Northern Europe’s politicians: first the former Danish PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen and then (since October 2014) the former Norwegian PM Jens Stoltenberg. Brussels extended Stoltenberg’s contract to September 2022. The not so far deadline is already prompting the first discussions among the Atlantic partners.

Next year, the new secretary might be introduced at NATO’s Madrid summit in late spring or early summer. According to the Western zeitgeist, a woman is largely expected to reach the top civilian rank inside NATO for the first time. To complete the identikit, you have to consider the shift toward North, North-East of the Alliance that since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 is progressively positioning his troops around the Russian borders.

The first three names circulating are the former presidents Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović of Croatia and Dalia Grybauskaitė of Lithuania; and present Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid. The play is far from over, and many other countries will push their candidates. Despite her poor public relations skills and charisma, the UK could try with the former number 10, Theresa May. In a time of rising tension with Russia one thing is sure: the standard of the new incumbent should meet the same flattening attitude towards Washington that the two last northern secretaries ensured so dutifully.

As Moscow (and everyone in the world, indeed, except the European mainstream media) knows, the strategic power of the alliance lies on the Western side of the Atlantic only. Viewing from the U.S., one of the most appreciated attitudes of European allies is unconditioned obedience. A quality that the Northern European countries epitomise best. Surely more than the comparatively less trustable Southern countries like France, Italy or Spain. Or the Germans. Linked to Russia by an eternal geopolitical love/hate relationship, Germany has recently blocked the supply of NATO weaponry to Kiev despite Washington’s pressures. Having a robust commercial relationship with Russia, Berlin views economic war with Moscow, not to mention an actual military conflict, a nightmare to cope with reluctantly only when the American pressure becomes unbearable.

So if you want to find the NATO hardcore militant, you have to meet the elites of Northern Europe. Peoples are a different matter; even though in recent times the pools are going slightly towards NATO support, the public opinions are still largely divided and generally inclined to a neutral attitude on  security matters. If you let ideology apart, it is difficult to explain why a more aggressive NATO stance should be in those countries’ national interest. This consideration works well for the entire Eastern side of the Atlantic Alliance.

For many years, the cooperation between the governments of the Nordic Council (a body for formal inter-parliamentary collaboration among Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland) avoided security issues out of respect for Sweden and Finland’s non-aligned status. But last November, the usual fair play was somehow put aside. NATO’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg addresses the 73rd Session of the Nordic Council in Copenhagen, saying: “By remaining united and continuing to adapt to a changing world, we will keep the ’deep peace’ here in the Nordic region and in Europe”.

In the most aggressive interpretation of ancient “Si vis pacem para bellum”, the “deep peace” is pursued through a constant military push towards the Russian border. When Russia reacts, as in the Ukrainian case, Western media are there to shout at the new barbarian aggression.

Despite Sweden’s new Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson recently saying that Sweden would not be applying for NATO membership, the country is a stable satellite of the Alliance. Last June, Sweden hosted, with a crucial role, the Exercise Arctic Challenge 21, one of the largest air-power drills in Europe. Arctic Challenge deployed warplanes from the U.S., Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Britain for air defence, close air support, air-defence suppression and air-to-ground strike training.

The Swedish government has reintroduced military conscription, approved a staggering 40 per cent increase in defence spending (the Country’s hugest defence-spending increase in 70 years), defined a new security doctrine, the “Total Defence,” and started a military build-up in Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea with a charming “view” on the Baltic Countries.

Since 2016, Stockholm has been a key U.S. partner in providing a flexible global-strike capability (read: against Russia) of the long-range American bombers. The new spending will increase the size of the country’s military by 67 per cent, reorganise the army into mechanised brigades, add air-defence systems to warships, build up the size of the navy and deploy a next-generation fighter-bomber.

In early November, Sweden received its first Patriot missile defence system from the United States. The military industries of the neutral and pacifist Sweden are going under full sail: sales increased from 172 USD Million in 2019 to 286 USD Million in 2020, with Pakistan and Emirates at the top of the list. In recent years, this trend has been in ironic contrast with the irregularly pursued Sweden’s feminist foreign policy (FFP).

Finland is the other regular-irregular at  NATO’s table. Finnish President Sauli Niinistö has just replayed like this to the last Russian appeal not to join the eastwards shift of the Alliance: “Finland considers NATO to be a factor that is fostering security and stability in Europe. Maintaining a national room to manoeuvre and freedom of choice is the foundation of Finland’s foreign, security and defence policy. This also includes the possibility of military alignment and applying for NATO membership”.

In a 2019 poll, half of Finns, 51 per cent, said they are against joining NATO while the yes faction scored 26 per cent. At the end of October, NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg praised Finland and Sweden’s close partnership with the Atlantic Alliance while visiting the Swedish Navy base in the Hårsfjärden fjord near Berga, Haninge, during the joint Swedish/Finnish Naval Exercise, Swenex-21.

“It is important that NATO allies, Finland and Sweden continue to train and exercise together. Over the years, we have been working more and more closely together. We have seen the security situation in the region deteriorate, with Russia’s aggressive posturing and its military build-up. This makes our cooperation even more important”, said the secretary general.

Finland has just chosen the F-35A Block 4 multirole fighter to replace its fleet of 62 old F/A-18C/D Hornets. Helsinki has confirmed its intention to buy 64 examples of the Joint Strike Fighter. All included: armament, training, maintenance, and other services, with deliveries of the jets scheduled to start in 2025. The estimated global expense is 8,3 billion euros. The Swedish, with their challenging Saab Gripen E, were the great losers. The F35 is a very advanced fighter and Helsinki is to develop a domestic support network that will be among the most sizable anywhere outside the U.S., probably only behind Israel. Despite this reality, the moral of the story is that when it comes to NATO, Europe loses, and America wins, either strategically or economically. The game is not to reverse the unrealistic narrative of bad Russia against the good Western Alliance but to understand that European countries’ national interest is not the main concern of the American-led alliance.

The US is about to move towards a far more likely first use of nuclear weapons, with word that the Air Force has “completed flight testing” of the cost-and-performance-plagued F35A Lightning fighter, all units of which are being “upgraded” to carry thermonuclear weapons.

What this means, as explained in a new article in Popular Mechanics, is that the world’s most costly weapons program (at $1.7 trillion), a fifth-generation fighter, supposedly “invisible”  to radar (that actually cannot fight and is not invisible to advanced radars), now has a new mission to justify its existence and continued production:  dropping dial-able “tactical” nuclear weapons that can be as small as 0.3 kilotons or up to 50 kilotons in explosive power.

Now 0.3 kilotons is “just” the equivalent of 300 tons of dynamite, which supposedly makes them “useable,” meaning not holocaust-causing (that is assuming that some country backing the targeted country doesn’t decide to respond in kind and we go up the escalation ladder quickly to ever bigger bombs. Meanwhile,  \ dialed up to its maximum 50-kiloton power each F35A bomb would be significantly more than twice as powerful as the nuclear bomb that leveled Nagasaki.

The Popular Mechanics article, also published in Yahoo News, quotes Pentagon sources as saying the new F35A capability gives the US flexibility to deliver nukes to targets in a country threatening the US, and also to recall them up to the last second before dropping the weapon since the plane would be piloted. But this supposed advantage of a manned delivery system being recallable is a fantasy.

As Daniel Ellsberg has exposed in detail in his 2017 book The Doomsday Machine, written based on his decades of work with a top security clearance on behalf of the Secretary of Defense office investigating command-and-control procedures and practices of the nation’s nuclear forces, there is no way to guarantee that a pilot ordered on a nuclear strike mission will receive — or believe — any message or signal ordering a cancellation of the attack order.

As Ellsberg explains, communication systems routinely break down on an almost daily basis at one of the US military’s hundreds of global bases and aircraft carrier battle groups. cutting of the link between Washington and bases far-flung military bases, because of equipment malfunctions, storms, solar flares, etc.. Furthermore, in a period of international crisis, a pilot may distrust even an order to call off an attack which, after all, won’t be a phone call from the president, a Pentagon general, or even a known base commander, but rather a short coded signal. As Ellsberg notes in his terrifying book, the other flaw is that a pilot, once ordered on such a mission, could decide in the heat of the moment, to just carry on with orders and drop his weapon regardless of receiving a cancellation order. Remember, in times of crisis, countries may be employing jamming systems to knock out enemy military communications, or could even be blinding communication satellites.

Meanwhile the scenario presented in the article — a lone pilot being dispatched to deliver one or two dial-able B61-12 thermonuclear weapons onto some command-and-control center or missile launching site, perhaps — is not really what the Pentagon strategists have in mind for its  F-35A planes.

Actually, hundreds of these Air Force versions of the F-35 have been getting so-called “block four’ alterations, with bulging farings replacing their formerly sleek bodies, in order to allow the carrying  of two elongated Hydrogen bombs inside their fuselages, where they won’t present a larger radar image as bombs carried externally under wings would do. These re-configured planes, which also have software upgrades to allow them to prime, unlock and release their twin nukes, are being delivered to forward bases near Russia and China within the relatively short range of the bomb-laden planes.

The idea (hopefully wishful thinking), is that such planes, armed with their two nukes, could streak across a Russian and/or Chinese border at supersonic speed, flying low to the ground, to strike government buildings, military bases, and missile silos in a surprise strike, leaving the target country unable to retaliate.

For US military policy makers, all the way back to the post-war late 1940s, through the 1950s  and on, taking out America’s nuclear-armed rivals in a preventive atomic blitz has long been a strategic dream, always deferred thankfully because of lingering fears among saner heads that such a criminal and genocidal attack would fail to prevent a counterattack.

Bernie Sanders, the independent self-described “socialist” senator from Vermont, now needs to finally end his own dogged and cynical support for the basing of 18 F-35A planes at the Burlington International Airport, where pilots of the Vermont Air National Guard are now training for exactly the kinds of bombing scenario described above.

Sanders has insisted that while he “opposes” the “wasteful” F35 program, it is a “done deal” and so he wants Vermont’s Air National Guard unit to get a piece of the “benefits” of having it and the “jobs” it supposedly brings with it in his state. He has continued to dissemble, claiming that the Vermont F35As will not carry nuclear weapons or be used in nuclear war. In fact, his office was caught altering a document from the Pentagon to hide the fact that the Vermont Guard’a planes would in fact definitely be upgraded with the “block four” alterations so they can carry nukes just like all F-35As in the Air Force fleet.

Vermont’s planes would not, and could not, fly from Burlington over the North Pole to deliver their bombs to Russian or Chinese targets, except with multiple in-flight refueling sessions, and all the while flying at subsonic speeds to conserve fuel, obviating any chance of a “surprise” attack. But they could, if the pilots are trained (as they will be) in using the upgraded planes to carry their nuclear cargo and to release them on targets, be activated during a period of international crisis. The plan would then be for US-based pilots to ferry their F-35A planes to forward bases, where the nuclear bombs would be stockpiled. The planes and their pilots would then be prepositioned, to join a potential attack, or to create a sense of looming threat that would, supposedly, lead the enemy — say Russia or China — to back down, or alternatively to launch their own attack first.

With word the Air Force is ready to start full-scale upgrading of its F35A fleet to nuclear-capable bombers, Sen. Sanders needs to execute a red-faced volte-face and demand the immediate removal of F35A jets from Vermont. He must also stop hypocritically  supporting the further production and Block-Four upgrading of this plane.

Let’s be clear:  a nuclear-armed, radar-evading fighter-bomber fleet cannot by any stretch be conceived of as a “retaliatory” weapon. If Russia or China, the only countries that could even conceivably consider launching a first strike on the US, were to do so, having a plane that could hit command-and-control centers, missile silos and military bases in the attacking country would be useless. First of all those planes would have been already blown to smithereens on the ground in the initial enemy attack. Second, if they somehow survived to take off, the national political and military leaders of any country launching such an attack would long since have moved to protective hidden locations once having ordered their attack, troops would have been moved off their inevitably targeted bases with their equipment, and missile silos would be empty holes, their rockets having already been launched. Moreover, enemy countries would be on high alert looking for any incoming F35s or other bombers and would have their anti-aircraft missile arrays ready to fire, and their fighter defenses already in the air on full alert to knock down the heavily burdened and inevitably poorly armed incoming US planes.

It’s all a big lie in other words, for the Pentagon to claim these planes are making the world safer by including a pilot.

As first-strike weapons the nuclear bomb-capable F35A simply increases the chance that a war will be started by the US,  if Pentagon strategists start believing they have a window of  opportunity to strike without fear of a significant retaliation.

That leaves the other more likely risk too:  That this nuclear-capable fighter could be used to deliver a “small nuke”  against some  non-nuclear nation — one of the many where US military forces are constantly being engaged in undeclared wars like Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, Niger, the Philippines, etc. The consequences of such a use of a nuclear weapon against a non-nuclear nation, by opening the door to widespread use of nuclear weapons in virtually any armed conflict, could be as profound as was the first such use against non-nuclear Japan by a cocky US in the waning days of World War II.

Those two bombings of two non-military targets, obliterating two major Japanese cities, led directly to a multi-generational multi-trillion-dollar arms race between the US and Soviet Union, and ultimately China too, and to a spread of nuclear weapons to seven more nations.

This latest escalation of nuclear weaponry, creating a fleet of over a thousand nuclear-carrying stealth fighter-bombers, will inevitably lead to similar planes being developed in Russia, China and elsewhere (China has already created a very similar stealth fighter to the F-35, and Russia, which has a very advanced aircraft design capability, is sure to follow suit).  The unrelenting efforts, at incalculable cost. by the US to come up with a viable first-strike capability are also compelling the Russians and Chinese to respond with alternative deterrent weapons, notably hypersonic cruise missiles that can autonomously change direction and shift targets while flying at thousands of miles per hour, are not first-strike weapons, given the relatively longer time it would take them to reach their targets.

For all the huffing and puffing of media scaremongers, the hypersonic missiles being tested by Russia and China are a defensive weapons designed to make a nation like the US that is openly looking for an offensive first-strike possibility,  think twice before launching such a holocaust.

Deterrence is decidedly not what the F35A nuclear bomber upgrades are about. The best that can be hoped is that this bomber upgrade is just the latest in a series of schemes by the Pentagon, F35-maker Lockheed-Martin, and all the company’s Congressional backers accepting the company’s bribes, to keep this $1.7-trillion gravy train for this epic boondoggle of a plane flowing.

counterpunch.org

On October 5 the U.S. State Department announced that the U.S. military’s arsenal of nuclear weapons numbered 3,750 as of September 30, 2020. It was stated with satisfaction that “This number represents an approximate 88 percent reduction in the stockpile from its maximum (31,255) at the end of fiscal year 1967”, although it wasn’t mentioned that the reduction since 2018 was only 35.

On the same day, the U.S. Defense Department publication Stars and Stripes reported that “an Air Force fighter jet slated to debut later this year in Europe passed a milestone when it dropped mock nuclear bombs during training flights designed to ensure its ability to fulfil NATO’s nuclear deterrence mission . . . The successful test of the F-35A Lightning II came as the 48th Fighter Wing, based at Britain’s RAF Lakenheath, reactivated the 495th Fighter Squadron last week for a new mission in Europe. [Emphasis added.] Ahead of the fighter model’s arrival at Lakenheath, two F-35As that took off from Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, completed a full weapon system demonstration, regarded as a graduation flight test for achieving nuclear certification.”

In February 2021 U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken informed the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva that “President Biden has made it clear: the U.S. has a national security imperative and a moral responsibility to reduce and eventually eliminate the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction” and President Biden pledged to “take steps to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy,” but it has not been made clear how elimination of the threat from nuclear weapons or reduction of their role in U.S. military strategy can be achieved by training more combat aircraft pilots in the use of nuclear weapons and then deploying them to Europe with their strike aircraft.

The United Kingdom has an equally interesting perspective in what it describes as its “leading approach to nuclear disarmament” and is increasing its arsenal of nuclear weapons. As the Royal United Services Institute noted in March, the UK’s 2021 Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy states that the UK is “raising a self-imposed limit on its overall nuclear warhead stockpile” of the current 225 warheads.

The Review, headed “Global Britain in a Competitive Age”, explains that in 2021 it had been announced as national policy that there would be a reduction in “our overall nuclear warhead stockpile ceiling from not more than 225 to not more than 180 by the mid-2020s. However, in recognition of the evolving security environment . . . this is no longer possible, and the UK will move to an overall nuclear weapon stockpile of no more than 260 warheads.” Then it assured the international community that in spite of increasing the number of its nuclear weapons delivery systems the United Kingdom is “strongly committed to full implementation of the NPT in all its aspects, including nuclear disarmament.”

It is intriguing that the present British government would have us believe that more nuclear weapons and deployment of 27 U.S. nuclear-capable F-35 aircraft to the UK’s Royal Air Force base at Lakenheath are in some fashion compatible with nuclear disarmament, but what is consistent is their linkage with the stockpiles of U.S. nuclear bombs already in Europe.

It is not known if there are or will be any U.S. nuclear weapons kept at Lakenheath, and no doubt the UK government would be comfortable with such storage which would add comparatively few bombs to the hundred or so already stored in vaults in air bases at Kleine Brogel in Belgium, Büchel in Germany, Aviano and Ghedi in Italy, Volkel in the Netherlands, and Incirlik in Turkey. It is regrettable that while the U.S. and Britain insist that they are trying to reduce the threat of nuclear war they are actually increasing and expanding numbers, locations and strike capabilities of nuclear weapons’ systems.

The U.S.-Nato military alliance policy is that “nuclear weapons are a core component of NATO’s overall capabilities for deterrence and defence,” resting almost entirely on U.S. nuclear delivery capabilities which are to be expanded at vast expense, with the new generation of Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Systems, now referred to as the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, likely to cost 95 billion dollars — if there are no cost overruns.

As stated by the Congressional Budget Office, it is “required by law to project the 10-year costs of nuclear forces every two years” and its latest paper, “Projected Costs of U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2021 to 2030” makes sobering reading because it is projected that U.S. taxpayers, in this era of fiscal crises, will be required to pay sixty billion dollars a year for nuclear forces over the next ten years. The Office estimates that “about $188 billion of the $551 billion total over the 2021–2030 period would go toward modernizing nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Of that amount, $175 billion would go toward modernizing the strategic nuclear triad, and $13 billion would be for modernizing tactical nuclear weapons and delivery systems.” And this does not include funding of such massive projects as the F-35 strike aircraft which will cost some $1.6 trillion.

The political justification for massive military spending on conventional and nuclear weapons by the governments in London and Washington is their contention that Russia and China pose a threat and that, in the words of the 2021 U.S. Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, Russia, for example, is “determined to enhance its global influence and play a disruptive role on the world stage.” (Presumably Washington means the sort of disruption that Associated Press reported on October 7 when “Europe’s soaring gas prices dropped . . . after Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested his country could sell more gas to European spot buyers via its domestic market in addition to through existing long-term contracts.”)

The surge in deployment of nuclear systems and the overall tenor of nuclear weapons developments in Europe do not meet with approval in the European community. For example, a survey published in January revealed that 74% of Italians, 58% of Dutch and 57% of Belgians and 83% of Germans want U.S. nuclear weapons removed from their countries, and another poll (albeit by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) found that 77% of Britons favour a total ban on nuclear weapons.

Europe is in a state of flux, and not only because of the economic and social effects of the pandemic. For example, the Warsaw government’s recent refusal to abide by European Union laws could result in Poland leaving the EU (which would be greeted with approval by most EU citizens) but this would have no effect on the U.S.-Nato military buildup — the “Enhanced Forward Presence” along Russia’s borders, backed to the hilt by nuclear weapons.

U.S. deployment of a further squadron of nuclear strike aircraft to the UK, for a “new mission in Europe”, combined with its existing stocks of nuclear weapons in Europe and Britain’s undebated decision to increase its nuclear weapons’ arsenal are signals to continental European nations that planning for nuclear war against Russia is accelerating. While these countries prefer to engage with Washington and London in a balanced fashion and wish to maintain cordial relations, it would be advisable to question the motives behind the growing emphasis on nuclear war and insist on reduction in confrontational deployments.

Cancel culture is a common, almost viral, term in political and social discourse these days. Basically, somebody expresses views considered to be outrageous or vile or racist or otherwise insensitive and inappropriate. In response, that person is “canceled,” perhaps losing a job or otherwise sidelined and silenced. In being deplatformed by Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites, for instance, this country’s previous president has, it could be argued, been canceled — at least by polite society. More than a few might add, good riddance.

Cancel culture is all around us, with a single glaring exception: the U.S. military. No matter how poorly a major weapons system performs, no matter how much it goes over budget, no matter how long it takes to field, it almost never gets canceled. As a corollary to this, no matter how poorly a general performs in one of our twenty-first-century wars, no matter his lack of victories or failure to achieve mission objectives, he almost never gets cashiered, demoted, or even criticized. A similar thing could be said of America’s twenty-first-century wars themselves. They are disasters that simply never get canceled. They just go on and on and on.

Is it any surprise, then, that a system which seems to eternally reward failure consistently produces it as well? After all, if cancel culture should apply anywhere, it would be to faulty multibillion-dollar weapons systems and more than a few generals, who instead either get booted upstairs to staff positions or retire comfortably onto the boards of directors of major weapons companies.

Let’s take a closer look at several major weapons systems that are begging to be canceled — and a rare case of one that finally was.

* The F-35 stealth fighter: I’ve written extensively on the F-35 over the years. Produced by Lockheed Martin, the plane was at one point seven years behind schedule and $163 billion over budget. Nonetheless, the U.S. military persisted and it is now nearing full production at a projected total cost of $1.7 trillion by the year 2070. Even so, nagging problems persist, including engine difficulties and serious maintenance deficiencies. Even more troubling: the plane often can’t be cleared for flying if lightning is anywhere in the area, which is deeply ironic, given that it’s called the Lightning II. Let’s hope that there are no thunderstorms in the next war.

* The Boeing KC-46 tanker: A tanker is basically a flying gas station, air-to-air refueling being something the Air Force mastered half a century ago. Never underestimate the military’s ability to produce new problems while pursuing more advanced technology, however. Doing away with old-fashioned windows and an actual airman as a “boom operator” in the refueling loop (as in a legacy tanker like the KC-135), the KC-46 uses a largely automated refueling system via video. Attractive in theory, that system has yet to work reliably in practice. (Maybe, it will, however, by the year 2024, the Air Force now says.) And what good is a tanker that isn’t assured of actually transferring fuel in mid-air and turns out to be compromised as well by its own fuel leaks? The Air Force is now speaking of “repurposing” its new generation of tankers for missions other than refueling. That’s like me saying that I’m repurposing my boat as an anchor since it happened to spring a leak and sink to the bottom of the lake.

* And speaking of boats, perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that the Navy has had serious problems of its own with its most recent Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers. That service started building carriers in the 1920s, so one might imagine that, by now, the brass had gained some mastery of the process of updating them and building new ones. But never underestimate the allure of cramming unproven and expensive technologies for “next generation” success on board such vessels. Include among them, when it comes to the Ford-class carriers, elevators for raising munitions that notoriously don’t operate well and a catapult system for launching planes from the deck (known as the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System or EMALS) that’s constantly breaking down. As you might imagine, not much can happen on an aircraft carrier when you can’t load munitions or launch planes effectively. Each new Ford-class carrier costs in the neighborhood of $14 billion, yet despite all that money, it simply “isn’t very good at actually being a carrier,” as an article in Popular Mechanics magazine bluntly put it recently. Think of it as the KC-46 of the seas.

* And speaking of failing ships, let’s not forget the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), which have earned the nickname “little crappy ships.” A serious propulsion design flaw may end up turning them into “floating garbage piles,” defense journalist Jared Keller recently concluded. The Navy bought 10 of them for roughly half a billion dollars each, with future orders currently on hold. Lockheed Martin is the lead contractor, the same one responsible for the wildly profligate (and profitable) F-35.

* Grimly for the Navy, problems were so severe with its Zumwalt-class of stealth destroyers that the program was actually canceled after only three ships had been built. (The Navy initially planned to build 32 of them.) Critiqued as a vessel in search of a mission, the Zumwalt-class was also bedeviled by problems with its radar and main armament. In total, the Navy spent $22 billion on a failed “next generation” concept whose cancelation offers us that utter rarity of our moment: a weapon so visibly terrible that even the military-industrial complex couldn’t continue to justify it.

Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday has gone on record as rejecting the idea of integrating exotic, largely untried and untested technologies into new ship designs (known in the biz as “concurrent development”). Godspeed, admiral!

Much like the troubled F-35 and the Littoral Combat Ship, the Zumwalt’s spiraling costs were due in part to the Pentagon’s fixation on integrating just such “leading-edge” technologies into designs that themselves were in flux. (Not for nothing do military wags refer to them as bleeding edge technologies.) Such wildly ambitious concurrent development, rather than saving time and money, tends to waste plenty of both, leading to ultra-expensive less-than-fully effective weapons like the Zumwalt, the original version of which had a particularly inglorious breakdown while passing through (or rather not passing through) the Panama Canal in November 2016.

Given such expensive failures, you might be forgiven for wondering whether, in the twenty-first century, while fighting never-ending disastrous wars across significant parts of the planet, America’s military isn’t also actively working to disarm itself. Seriously, if we’re truly talking about weapons that are vital to national defense, failure shouldn’t be an option, but far too often it is.

With this dubious record, one might imagine the next class of Navy vessel could very well be named for Philip Francis Queeg, the disturbed and incompetent ship captain of novelist Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny. It’s also quite possible that the Pentagon’s next advanced fighter jet will fulfill former Martin Marietta CEO Norman Augustine’s estimate from the 1980s that, by the year 2054, the entire Pentagon budget would be needed to buy one — and only one – combat aircraft. Perhaps a Death Star for America’s new Space Force?

Is It Even Possible to Cancel a Major Weapons System Like the F-35?

The Navy’s Zumwalt-class of destroyers was such a disaster that the program was indeed canceled a mere $22 billion along the line, but what about a program like the F-35? Is it even possible to cancel such a behemoth of a weapons system?

That question was put to me by Christian Sorensen, author of Understanding the War Industry, who like me is a member of the Eisenhower Media Network. Overpriced and underperforming weapons, Sorensen noted, are a feature of, rather than some sort of bug in, the military-industrial complex as future profits for giant weapons companies drive design and fielding decisions, not capability, efficiency, or even need. He’s right, of course. There may even be a perverse incentive within the system to build flawed weapons, since there’s so much money to be made in troubleshooting and “fixing” those flaws. Meanwhile, the F-35, like America’s leading financial institutions in the 2007-2009 Great Recession, is treated as if it were too big to fail. And perhaps it is.

Jobs, profits, influence, and foreign trade are all involved here, so much so that mediocre (or worse) performance is judged acceptable, if only to keep the money flowing and the production lines rolling. And as it happens, the Air Force really has no obvious alternative to the F-35. During the 1950s and 1960s, the aerospace industry used to build a wealth of models: the “century series” of fighters, from the F-100 through the F106. (The notorious F-111 was an early version of the F-35.) The Air Force could also tap Navy designs like for the F-4 Phantom. Now, it’s essentially the F-35 or bust.

In its obvious desperation, that service is turning to older designs like the F-15 Eagle (circa 1970) and the F-117 Stealth Fighter (circa 1980) to bridge the gap created by delays and cost overruns in the F-35 program. Five decades after its initial flight, it’s something of a miracle that the F-15 is still being produced — and, of course, an obvious indictment of the soaring costs and inadequate performance of its replacements.

The exorbitant pricing of the F-35, as well as the F-22 Raptor, has recently even driven top Air Force officials to propose the creation of an entirely new “low cost” fighter. Irony of ironies, once upon a time in another universe, the F-35 was supposed to be the low-cost replacement for “fourth-generation” F-15s and F-16s. Last month, current Air Force Chief of Staff General Charles “CQ” Brown exhibited the usual convoluted and nonsensical logic of the military-industrial complex when he discussed that new dream fighter:

“If we have the capability to do something even more capable [than the F-16] for cheaper and faster, why not? Let’s not just buy off the shelf, let’s actually take a look at something else out there that we can build.”

In other words, why buy already-proven and much-improved variants of the F-16 when you could design and build an entirely new plane from scratch, supposedly in a “cheaper” and “faster” manner? Of course, given that new fighters now take roughly two decades to design and field, that’s an obvious fantasy from the start. If my old service — I’m a retired Air Force officer — wants fast and cheap, it should simply go with the tried-and-true F-16. Yet an entirely new plane is so much more attractive to a service under the spell of the giant weapons makers, even as the F-35 continues to be produced under its old, now demonstrably false, mantra of cheaper-and-better.

As Christian Sorensen summed up our present situation to me: “If an exorbitant under-performing platform like the F-35 can’t be canceled, then what are we doing? How do we ever expect to bring home the troops [garrisoning the globe] if we can’t even end one awful weapons platform or address the underlying systemic issues that cause such a platform to be created?”

Of course, an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” like the one that President Dwight D. Eisenhower described in his 1961 farewell address to the nation (in which he first warned of the dangers of a “military-industrial complex” gaining “unwarranted influence”) would work to cancel wasteful, unnecessary weapons systems like the F-35. But what if the forces in place in American society act to keep that very citizenry apathetic and ignorant instead?

Call me jaded, but I can’t see the F-35 being canceled outright, even though it hasn’t technically yet reached the stage of full production. Likely enough, however, such a cancellation would only happen in the wake of major cuts to the defense budget that forced the services to make hard choices. But such cuts clearly aren’t on the agenda of a Congress that continues to fund record Pentagon budgets in a bipartisan fashion; a Congress that, unchecked as it is by us citizens, simply won’t force the Pentagon to make tough choices.

And here’s one more factor to consider as to why cancel culture is never applied to Pentagon weaponry: Americans generally love weaponry. We embrace weapons, celebrate them, pose with them. To cancel them, we’d have to cancel a version of ourselves that revels in high-tech mayhem. To cancel them, we’d have to cancel a made-in-America mindset that equates such weaponry — the stealthier and sexier the better — with safety and security, and that sees destruction overseas as serving democracy at home.

America’s military-industrial complex will undoubtedly keep building the fanciest, most expensive weaponry known to humanity, even if the end products are quite often ineffective and unsound. Yet as scores of billions of dollars are thrown away on such weapons systems, America’s roads, bridges, and other forms of infrastructure continue to crumble. How about it, America? Why not cancel those weapons and build back better at home?

tomdispatch.com

Thomas NEWDICK

The Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter has suffered a long list of problems that we’ve frequently noted. Now a new report from Bloomberg, citing a Pentagon annual assessment, specifies how the stealth fighters can’t shoot straight.

The Pentagon has already spent upwards of $428 billion on the F-35 program, which will cost taxpayers $1.5 trillion over its 55-year lifespan.

Already, there have been a host of problems with the stealth fighters, including more than 800 software errors.

And the newest problem: A General Dynamics GAU-12/U Equalizer, a five-barrel 25 mm Gatling-type rotary cannon, mounted on some F-35s, has “unacceptable” accuracy of hitting ground targets.

The Pentagon’s new report said the Air Force’s cannon mounted inside the plane, has “unacceptable” accuracy due to “misalignments” in the gun’s mount that didn’t meet specifications.

The report also said mounts for the cannons are cracking, forcing the Air Force to limit the weapon’s use. The F-35 program office has “made progress with changes to the gun installation” to improve accuracy.

The report notes 873 software errors in the plane, as of 4Q19. The good news, it’s down from 917 in 3Q18.

“Although the program office is working to fix deficiencies, new discoveries are still being made, resulting in only a minor decrease in the overall number” and leaving “many significant,” the assessment said.

There was also mention that the planes could be susceptible to cybersecurity “vulnerabilities.”

Here are other unresolved glitches of the F-35 program that we mentioned last year (the partial list via Defense News):

• When the F-35B vertically lands on very hot days, older engines may be unable to produce the required thrust to keep the jet airborne, resulting in a hard landing.
• After doing certain maneuvers, F-35B and F-35C pilots are not always able to completely control the aircraft’s pitch, roll and yaw.
• Supersonic flight in excess of Mach 1.2 can cause structural damage and blistering to the stealth coating of the F-35B and F-35C.
• Cabin pressure spikes in the cockpit of the F-35 have been known to cause barotrauma, the word given to extreme ear and sinus pain.
• The spare parts inventory shown by the F-35’s logistics system does not always reflect reality, causing occasional mission cancellations.
• If the F-35A and F-35B blows a tire upon landing, the impact could also take out both hydraulic lines and pose a loss-of-aircraft risk.
• Possible maneuvering issues when the aircraft is operating above a 20-degree angle of attack.
• The F-35’s logistics system currently has no way for foreign F-35 operators to keep their secret data from being sent to the United States.

Despite the ongoing problems that many F-35s are not combat-ready and have many issues that are putting American pilots in severe disadvantages for a dogfight, Congress continues to order more planes.

As of 3Q19, the F-35 program has 490 planes, many of which could be suffering from computer errors and guns that don’t hit targets.

zerohedge.com

William D. HARTUNG

When, in his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the “unwarranted influence” wielded by the “military-industrial complex,” he could never have dreamed of an arms-making corporation of the size and political clout of Lockheed Martin. In a good year, it now receives up to $50 billion in government contracts, a sum larger than the operating budget of the State Department. And now it’s about to have company.

Raytheon, already one of the top five U.S. defense contractors, is planning to merge with United Technologies. That company is a major contractor in its own right, producing, among other things, the engine for the F-35 combat aircraft, the most expensive Pentagon weapons program ever. The new firm will be second only to Lockheed Martin when it comes to consuming your tax dollars — and it may end up even more powerful politically, thanks to President Donald Trump’s fondness for hiring arms industry executives to run the national security state.

Esper: Raytheon’s former top lobbyist. (DoD/Edward Lopez)

Just as Boeing benefited from its former Senior Vice President Patrick Shanahan’s stint as acting secretary of defense, so Raytheon is likely to cash in on the nomination of its former top lobbyist, Mike Esper, as his successor. Esper’s elevation comes shortly after another former Raytheon lobbyist, Charles Faulkner, left the State Department amid charges that he had improperly influenced decisions to sell Raytheon-produced guided bombs to Saudi Arabia for its brutal air war in Yemen. John Rood, third-in-charge at the Pentagon, has worked for both Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, while Ryan McCarthy, Mike Esper’s replacement as secretary of the Army, worked for Lockheed on the F-35, which the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) has determined may never be ready for combat.

And so it goes. There was a time when Donald Trump was enamored of “his” generals — Secretary of Defense James Mattis (a former board member of the weapons-maker General Dynamics), National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. Now, he seems to have a crush on personnel from the industrial side of the military-industrial complex.

As POGO’s research has demonstrated, the infamous “revolving door” that deposits defense executives like Esper in top national security posts swings both ways. The group estimates that, in 2018 alone, 645 senior government officials — mostly from the Pentagon, the uniformed military, and Capitol Hill — went to work as executives, consultants, or board members of one of the top 20 defense contractors.

Fifty years ago, Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire identified the problem when he noted that:

“the movement of high ranking military officers into jobs with defense contractors and the reverse movement of top executives in major defense contractors into high Pentagon jobs is solid evidence of the military-industrial complex in operation. It is a real threat to the public interest because it increases the chances of abuse… How hard a bargain will officers involved in procurement planning or specifications drive when they are one or two years away from retirement and have the example to look at of over 2,000 fellow officers doing well on the outside after retirement?”

In other words, that revolving door and the problems that go with it are anything but new. Right now, however, it seems to be spinning faster than ever — and mergers such as Raytheon-United Technologies are only likely to feed the phenomenon.

A Raytheon Tomahawk Block IV cruise missile during flight test at NAWS China Lake, California, 2002. (U.S. Navy via Wikimedia Commons)

The Last Supper

The merger of Raytheon and United Technologies should bring back memories of the merger boom of the 1990s, when Lockheed combined with Martin Marietta to form Lockheed Martin, Northrop and Grumman formed Northrop Grumman, and Boeing absorbed rival military aircraft manufacturer McDonnell Douglas. And it wasn’t just a matter of big firms pairing up either. Lockheed Martin itself was the product of mergers and acquisitions involving nearly two dozen companies — distinctly a tale of big fish chowing down on little fish. The consolidation of the arms industry in those years was strongly encouraged by Clinton administration Secretary of Defense William Perry, who held a dinner with defense executives that was later dubbed “the last supper.” There, he reportedly told the assembled corporate officials that a third of them would be out of business in five years if they didn’t merge with one of their cohorts.

The Clinton administration’s encouragement of defense industry mergers would prove anything but rhetorical. It would, for instance, provide tens of millions of dollars in merger subsidies to pay for the closing of plants, the moving of equipment, and other necessities. It even picked up part of the tab for the golden parachutes given defense executives and corporate board members ousted in those deals.

The most egregious case was surely that of Norman Augustine. The CEO of Martin Marietta, he would actually take over at the helm of the even more powerful newly created Lockheed Martin. In the process, he received $8.2 million in payments, technically for leaving his post as head of Martin Marietta. U.S. taxpayers would cover more than a third of his windfall. Then, a congressman who has only gained stature in recent years, Representative Bernie Sanders (I-VT), began to fight back against those merger subsidies. He dubbed them“payoffs for layoffs” because executives got government-funded bailouts, while an estimated 19,000 workers were laid off in the Lockheed Martin merger alone with no particular taxpayer support. Sanders was actually able to shepherd through legislation that clawed back some, but not all, of those merger subsidies.

Norman Augustine in 2009. (NASA/Paul E. Alers)

According to one argument in favor of the merger binge then, by closing half-empty factories, the new firms could charge less overhead and taxpayers would benefit. Well, dream on. This never came near happening, because the newly merged industrial behemoths turned out to have even greater bargaining power over the Pentagon and Congress than the unmerged companies that preceded them.

Draw your own conclusions about what’s likely to happen in this next round of mergers, since cost overruns and lucrative contracts continue apace. Despite this dismal record, Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy claims that the new corporate pairing will — you guessed it! — save the taxpayers money. Don’t hold your breath.

Influence on Steroids

While Trump briefly expressed reservations about the Raytheon-United Technologies merger and a few members of Congress struck notes of caution, it has been welcomed eagerly on Wall Street. Among the reasons given: the fact that the two companies generally make different products, so their union shouldn’t reduce competition in any specific sector of defense production. It has also been claimed that the new combo, to be known as Raytheon Technologies, will have more funds available for research and development on the weapons of the future.

(Daniel Penfield, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

But focusing on such concerns misses the big picture. Raytheon Technologies will have more money to make campaign contributions, more money to hire lobbyists, and more production sites that can be used as leverage over members of Congress loathe to oppose spending on weapons produced in their states or districts. The classic example of this phenomenon: the F-35 program, which Lockheed Martin claims produces 125,000 jobs spread over 46 states.

When I took a careful look at the company’s estimates, I found that they were claiming approximately twice as many jobs as that weapons system was actually creating. In fact, more than half of F-35-related employment was in just two states, California and Texas (though many other states did have modest numbers of F-35 jobs). Even if Lockheed Martin’s figures are exaggerated, however, there’s no question that spreading defense jobs around the country gives weapons manufacturers unparalleled influence over key members of Congress, much to their benefit when Pentagon budget time rolls around. In fact, it’s a commonplace for Congress to fund more F-35s, F-18s, and similar weapons systems than the Pentagon even asks for. So much for Congressional oversight.

Spectators wave as F-35 pilot returns from performing an aerial demonstration on July 13, 2019, at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. (Air Force/Alexander Cook)

Theoretically, incoming defense secretary Mike Esper will have to recuse himself from major decisions involving his former company. Among them, whether to continue selling Raytheon-produced precision-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for their devastating air war in Yemen that has killed remarkable numbers of civilians.

No worries. Trump himself is the biggest booster in living memory of corporate arms sales and Saudi Arabia is far and away his favorite customer. The Senate recently voted down a package of “emergency” arms sales to the Saudis and the UAE that included thousands of Raytheon Paveway munitions, the weapon of choice in that Yemeni air campaign. A similar vote must now take place in the House, but even if it, too, passes, Congress will need to override a virtually guaranteed Trump veto of the bill.

The Paveway laser-guided bomb. (Raytheon)

The Raytheon-United Technologies merger will further implicate the new firm in Yemeni developments because the Pratt and Whitney division of United Technologies makes the engine for Saudi Arabia’s key F-15S combat aircraft, a mainstay of the air war there. Not only will Raytheon Technologies profit from such engine sales, but that company’s technicians are likely to help maintain the Saudi air force, thereby enabling it to fly yet more bombing missions more often.

When pressed, Raytheon officials argue that, in enabling mass slaughter, they are simply following U.S. government policy. This ignores the fact that Raytheon and other weapons contractors spend tens of millions of dollars a year on lobbyists, political contributions, and other forms of influence peddling trying to shape U.S. policies on arms exports and weapons procurement. They are, in other words, anything but passive recipients of edicts handed down from Washington.

Yemen has been described as the world’s worse humanitarian crisis.

As Raytheon chief financial officer Toby O’Brien put it in a call to investors that came after the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, “We continue to be aligned with the administration’s policies, and we intend to honor our commitments.” Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson made a similar point, asserting that “most of these agreements that we have are government-to-government purchases, so anything that we do has to follow strictly the regulations of the U.S. government… Beyond that, we’ll just work with the U.S. government as they are continuing their relationship with [the Saudis].”

How Powerful Are the Military-Industrial Combines? 

Raytheon — its motto: “Customer Success Is Our Mission” — has primary operations in 16 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. That translates into a lot of leverage over key members of Congress and it doesn’t even count states where the company has major subcontractors. The addition of United Technologies will reinforce the new company’s presence in a number of those states, while adding Connecticut, Iowa, New York, and North Carolina (in other words, at least 20 states in all).

Raytheon headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts. (Coolcaesar, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Meanwhile, if the merger is approved, the future Raytheon Technologies will be greasing the wheels of its next arms contracts by relying on nearly four dozen former government officials the two separate companies hired as lobbyists, executives, and board members in 2018 alone. Add to that the $6.4 million in campaign contributions and $20 million in lobbying expenses Raytheon clocked during the last two election cycles and the outlines of its growing influence begin to become clearer. Then, add as well the $2.9 million in campaign contributions and $40 million in lobbying expenses racked up by its merger partner United Technologies and you have a lobbying powerhouse rivaled only by Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense conglomerate.

Eisenhower’s proposed counterweight to the power of the military-industrial complex was to be “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry.” And there are signs that significant numbers of individuals and organizations are beginning to pay more attention to the machinations of the arms lobby. My own outfit, the Center for International Policy, has launched a Sustainable Defense Task Force composed of former military officers and Pentagon officials, White House and congressional budget experts, and research staffers from progressive and good-government groups. It has already crafted a plan that would cut $1.2 trillion from the Pentagon budget over the next decade, while improving U.S. security by avoiding unnecessary wars, eliminating waste, and scaling back a Pentagon nuclear-weapons buildup slated to cost $1.5 trillion or more over the next three decades.

(Poor People’s Campaign)

The Poor People’s Campaign, backed by research conducted by the National Priorities Project of the Institute for Policy Studies, is calling for a one-year $350 billion cut in Pentagon expenditures. And a new network called “Put People Over the Pentagon” has brought together more than 20 progressive organizations to press presidential candidates to cut $200 billion annually from the Department of Defense’s bloated budget. Participants in the network include Public Citizen, Moveon.org, Indivisible, Win Without War, 350.org, Friends of the Earth, and United We Dream, many of them organizations that had not, in past years, made reducing the Pentagon budget a priority.

Raytheon and its arms industry allies won’t sit still in the face of such proposals, but at least the days of unquestioned and unchallenged corporate greed in the ever-merging (but also ever-expanding) arms industry may be coming to an end. The United States has paid an exorbitantly high price in blood and treasure, as have countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, for letting the military-industrial complex steer the American ship of state through this century so far. It’s long past time for a reckoning.

TomDispatch.com via consortiumnews.com

Turkey has just called Donald Trump’s bluff by going ahead with the purchase of Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missiles. The outrage in Washington is volcanic. Trump is vowing to rain fire and brimstone sanctions down on the disobedient Turks.

The S-400 is Russia’s premier anti-air missile. It is believed highly effective against all forms of aircraft – including stealth planes – cruise missiles, medium range ballistic missiles, drones, and some other types of missiles. It offers the choice of a self-directing version with its own radar seeker, or a less expensive, ‘semi-active’ version that is guided by its launch-battery radar.

What makes this AA missile (SS-21 in NATO terminology) particularly deadly is its remarkable 400 km range. The S-400 is said by Russia to be able to unmask stealth aircraft. I’ve been told by Soviet security officials as far back as 1990 that their radars could detect US stealth aircraft.

The missile’s remarkable range and detection capability puts at risk some of the key elements of US war fighting capability, notably the E-3 AWACS airborne radar aircraft, US electronic warfare aircraft, tankers and, of course, fighters like the new stealth F-35, improved F-15’s, F-22’s and B-1, B-2 and venerable B-52 heavy bombers used to carry long-ranged cruise missiles.

The Russian AA system can ‘shoot and scoot’ – firing and then quickly moving. Even more important, the S-400 system costs about half the price of its leading competitor, the US Patriot PAC-2 system. The S-400 may also be more reliable and accurate. The Great White Father in Washington is not happy.

The Trump administration brought heavy pressure on Turkey not to buy the S-400, threatening to cancel Turkey’s order for 100 of the new, stealthy F-35’s. Few thought the Turks would defy the US on this issue, but they failed to understand the depths of Turkey’s anger at the US.

Most Turks believe that the US engineered the failed 2016 coup against the democratic government in Ankara working through a shadowy religious organization run by the spiritual-political leader, Fethullah Gulen, who lives in exile in the United States. Turkey’s elected president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had been too independent-minded for Washington, clashing over US policy to Syria and the Gulf. He had also incurred the wrath of America’s Israel lobby for demanding justice for the Palestinians.

Turkey is now under economic attack by Washington. President Trump is threatening sanctions (read economic warfare) against Turkey, an old, loyal US ally. During the Korean War, Turkish troops saved American soldiers from Chinese encirclement. But Turks are mostly Muslim, and Muslims are hated by Trump and his allies.

S-400 missiles are now arriving in Turkey. What will Trump do? Cancel sale to Turkey of the F-35 and other military equipment or spare parts. Threaten to oust Turkey from NATO. Get Israel and Greece to menace Turkey.

Turkey can live without the F-35. It’s too expensive and may be more vulnerable than advertised. The Turks can get similar, less expensive warplanes from Russia. India and China are both buying the S-400. Even the Saudis may join them though Moscow is delaying the sale. S-400’s are also stationed in Syria with Russian forces and are slated to go to sea in a naval version.

If the US reacts with even more anger, Turkey could threaten to withdraw from NATO and kick the US out of its highly strategic air base in southeast Turkey at Incirlik. It’s worth recalling that Turkey provided NATO’s second largest army after the US. Someone has to remind the deeply unknowing Trump that NATO without Turkey will be declawed. Equally important, that a Turkey unconstrained by NATO membership, will seek sources of oil which it lacks and desperately needs, and new alliances.

Only a century ago, Iraq’s rich oil fields used to be part of the Ottoman Empire until taken away by the British and French imperial powers. The days of a subservient, tame Turkey may be ending.

ericmargolis.com

Air-defense systems capable of bringing down fifth-generation aircraft would have a devastating effect on the marketability and sales of US military hardware, while simultaneously boosting the desirability and sales of Russian military hardware. As I have often pointed out in other analyses, Hollywood’s role in marketing to enemies and allies alike the belief that US military hardware is unbeatable (with allies being obliged to buy said hardware) is central to Washington’s strategies for war and power projection.

As clashes between countries in such global hot spots as the Middle East increase and intensify, Hollywood’s propaganda will increasingly struggle to convince the rest of the world of the continued efficacy and superiority of US weapons systems in the face of their unfolding shortcomings.

The US finds itself faced with a situation it has not found itself in over the last 50 years, namely, an environment where it does not expect to automatically enjoy air superiority. Whatever semblance of an air defense that may have hitherto been able to pose any conceivable threat to Uncle Sam’s war machine was rudely dismissed by a wave of cruise missiles. To give two prime examples that occurred in Syria in 2018, latest-generation missiles were intercepted and shot down by decades-old Russian and Syrian systems. While the S-400 system has never been employed in Syria, it is noteworthy that the Serbian S-125 systems succeeded in identifying and shooting down an American F-117 stealth aircraft during the war in the Balkans.

There is a more secret aspect of the S-400 that is little disclosed, either within Russia itself or without. It concerns the S-400’s ability to collect data through its radar systems. It is worth noting Department of Defense spokesman Eric Pahon’s alarm over Turkey’s planned purchase of the S-400:

“We have been clear that purchasing the S-400 would create an unacceptable risk because its radar system could provide the Russian military sensitive information on the F-35. Those concerns cannot be mitigated. The S-400 is a system built in Russia to try to shoot down aircraft like the F-35, and it is inconceivable to imagine.

Certainly, in the event of an armed conflict, the S-400’s ability to shoot down fifth-generation aircraft is a huge concern for the United States and her allies who have invested so heavily in such aircraft. Similarly, a NATO country preferring Russian to American systems is cause for alarm. This is leaving aside the fact that the S-400 is spreading around the world, from China to Belarus, with dozens of countries waiting in line for the ability to seal their skies from the benevolent bombs of freedom. It is an excellent stick with which to keep a prowling Washington at bay.

But these concerns are nothing when compared to the most serious threat that the S-400 poses to the US arms industry, namely, their ability to collect data on US stealth systems.

Theoretically, the last advantage that the US maintains over her opponents is in stealth technology. The effectiveness of stealth has been debated for a long time, given that their costs may actually outweigh their purported benefits. But, reading between the lines, what emerges from US concerns over the S-400 suggests that Moscow is already capable of detecting US stealth systems by combining the radars of the S-400 with those of air-based assets, as has been the case in Syria (despite Washington’s denials).

The ability of the S-400 to collect data on both the F-35 and F-22 – the crown jewels of the US military-industrial complex – is a cause for sleepless nights for US military planners. What in particular causes them nightmares is that, for the S-400 to function in Turkey, it will have to be integrated into Turkey’s current “identification friend or foe” (IFF) systems, which in turn are part of NATO’s military tactical data-link network, known as Link 16.

This system will need to be installed on the S-400 in order to integrate it into Turkey’s defensive network, which could potentially pass information strictly reserved for the Russians that would increase the S-400’s ability to function properly in a system not designed to host such a weapon system.

The final risk is that if Turkey were to fly its F-35s near the S-400, the Link 16 system would reveal a lot of real-time information about the US stealth system. Over time, Moscow would be able to recreate the stealth profile of the F-35 and F-22, thereby making pointless Washington’s plans to spend 1.16 trillion dollars to produce 3,000 F-35s.

What must be remembered in our technological age is that once the F-35’s radar waveform has been identified, it will be possible to practice the military deception of recreating fictitious signals of the F-35 so as to mask one’s own aircraft with this shape and prevent the enemy’s IFF systems from being able to distinguish between friend or foe.

Of particular note is the active cooperation between China and Russia in air-defense systems. The S-400 in particular has already been operational in China for several years now, and it should be assumed that there would be active information sharing going on between Moscow and Beijing regarding stealth technology.

It turns out that the S-400 is a weapon system with multiple purposes that is even more lethal than previously imagined. It would therefore not be surprising that, were S-400s to be found in Cuba and Venezuela, Washington’s bellicose rhetoric against these two countries would come to an abrupt halt.

But what US military planners fear more than the S-400 embarrassing their much-vaunted F35 and F22 is the doubts they could raise about the efficacy of these stealth aircraft in the minds of allies and potential buyers. This lack of confidence would deal a mortal blow to the US arms industry, a threat far more real and devastating for them than a risk of conflict with Moscow or Beijing.

 Israeli officials play down the significance of the shipment of the S-300 to Syrian government forces. “The operational abilities of the air force are such that those (S-300) batteries really do not constrain the air force’s abilities to act,” said Tzachi Hanegbi, Israel’s regional cooperation minister. “You know that we have stealth fighters, the best planes in the world. These batteries are not even able to detect them.” Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in April that “if anyone attacks us, we will retaliate, regardless of S-300, S-700 or any anything else’s presence there”. The Pentagon has also cast doubt on the S-300’s effectiveness.

Let’s give the devil his due. The F-35 is a fine example of low observable aircraft with extraordinary capabilities. It’s a formidable weapon, but so is the S-300. If the worst happens, Israel’s high-end F-35I Adir aircraft will be checkmated by this Russian-made, state-of-the-art air-defense system.

A stealth aircraft is not invincible. It has its strengths and weaknesses. In Syria, Israeli F-35s will be up against a tight, integrated air-defense network with multiple radars trying to detect and track the target from different directions.

Excessive use of stealth technology restricts the combat capabilities of an aircraft like the F-35. A plane based on stealth technology does not perform exceptionally well in combat. It cannot carry many weapons because everything is hidden inside the body. Its ability to remain invisible is reduced as soon as the radar is turned on. Low frequencies can detect a stealth aircraft. A bomb bay that has been opened to launch weapons will also give the plane away.

The S-300’s 48N6E2 missiles boast single-shot kill probability of 80% to 93% for an aerial target, 40% to 85% for cruise missiles. and 50% to 77% for theater ballistic missiles. The Russian system uses the 96L6 all-altitude detector and acquisition radar, which works in L-band. It has a 300 km range and enhanced resolution. The S-300 PMU-2 version can detect and track 100 targets. The radar is said to be able to detect stealth targets.

Large wavelength radiations are reflected by “invisible” aircraft. Radar that operates in the VHF, UHF, L and S bands can detect and even track the F-35 without transmitting weapons-quality track. It is true that no accurate targeting is possible, but at least you can tell where the plane is.

The S-300’s vertically launched missiles can be re-targeted during flight. The explosion is so powerful that no kinetic kill is needed. Multiple killing elements will strike targets throughout the vicinity.

The IAF F-35s still need to be integrated with other assets in order to enhance their chances of carrying out missions. Just to be on the safe side, they will probably be escorted by electronic warfare aircraft, which are not stealth, thus giving away their position and providing the enemy with enough time to take countermeasures. Israel has only 12 F-35s, with 50 more arriving by 2024. The price tag for each is about $100 million. It’ll be a long time before they are in place and integrated into the Air Force. And twelve are simply not enough.

Besides, the aircraft still needs to be upgraded with the full operational capability of Block 3F and subsequent Block 4 software and hardware configurations.

Once the S-300s are operational, all other Israeli non-stealth planes will face huge risks any time they fly an offensive mission into Syria. It should also be taken into account that Russia will jam the radar, navigation, and communications systems on any aircraft attacking targets in Syria via the Mediterranean Sea, as Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu warned on Sept. 24, 2018. 

Israel boasts a broad repertoire of standoff weapons, along with highly advanced electronic warfare systems and enhanced cyber capabilities. It also has very experienced and well trained personnel. Nevertheless, the S-300 in Syria is a deterrent to be reckoned with. Hopefully, the peace process in that war-torn country will move forward and there will be no escalation to provoke an S-300 vs. F-35 fight.