Drone technology is moving from tactical to strategic use

 

Most of those interested in military and aviation history know how bombing forces developed.  At first bombs (very small ones) were dropped on front lines and support positions behind those lines - because the aircraft of the day couldn't reach any further.  As aircraft grew bigger, faster and more powerful, strategic bombing - attacking the enemy's population centers, factories, ports, etc. - became the new paradigm.  It mattered not whether your bombs actually hit a military target, because every target was now considered to be supporting the enemy's war effort.  Destroy an orphanage because it was built right next door to an industrial estate?  No problem.  Those orphans became "collateral damage" - unintended victims of the war.  Those who killed them bore no moral responsibility for their deaths.  They were simply "taking the war to the enemy", and that was a justifiable action.

Nuclear weapons didn't alter that scenario, except for the fact that one bomb could now destroy an entire city.  Air forces didn't need to send hundreds of aircraft to drop thousands of bombs (and be attacked as they did so, losing many aircraft and their crews to enemy defenses).  Instead, aircraft need not be sent at all.  A missile could drop a warhead accurately enough to spare the bomber crews from the losses they would otherwise incur.

However, drone technology is evolving so fast that it's changing the nature of technology in war.  It's not so much new as evolved . . . but that evolution is happening so quickly that it seems nobody can keep up with it.  Take Ukraine, for example.  When Russia invaded, Ukraine had effectively no air superiority to speak of, and few modern, high-technology weapons.  In their absence, Ukrainians had to develop new technologies as quickly as they could - and they did so very effectively.  We all know how Ukrainian drones stalemated the Russian advance in the Donbas area, and have led to a World War I-style trench warfare where neither side dares to advance in strength, for fear of the massive drone counterattack that would ensue.

What's more, Ukraine has now developed much larger, long-range attack drones that have gone far beyond what anyone had expected.  Indeed, they've blurred the distinction between "drone" and "cruise missile" until the terms are almost interchangeable.  Consider that a few days ago, Ukraine attacked a Russian oil refinery in Saratov, more than 1,700 miles from the launch site of the FP-5 Flamingo drones.  The FP-5 is claimed to have a maximum range of some 3,000 kilometers (1,900 miles).  Is it a drone, or a cruise missile, or both?

Smaller drones have so altered the shape of modern conflict that they may even render nuclear weapons superfluous (at least in terms of the destruction of a nation's ability to wage war).  HMS Defiant commented recently:

I see that some people who ought to know better are still nattering about the state of our munitions and our general unreadiness to wage war against China. Yes, yes, I know, dead horse, thoroughly beaten already but I did want to point out that the country that can turn out 80,000,000 iphones in a couple of months probably has no trouble turning out 40,000,000 high end killer drones with 300 mile ranges and 250 pound warheads.

The goal of the SIOP was to bathe in [nuclear] fire targets that needed to be destroyed affirmatively. If one could achieve the same effect by applying precise 250 pound bombs directly to the actual target and not just the neighborhood or city, then the same effect is achieved without all the excess radiation.

This poses a logical mans thinking problem for the evening. Every single HQ and logistics warehouse and fuel dump in Asia and the Western Pacific is in a precise, down to the inch known location on a target map. The putative bad guys have 40,000,000 drones. The other bad apples north of the 38th are known to be making lots of drones of their own and furnishing to their very good friends in Moscow.

. . .

You know another place where the heads lie uneasy at night? Yeah, Taiwan is in easy flight range of 40,000,000 expendable killer drones.

It does make me wonder though. Just what the hell is our answer to those 40,000,000 drones? ... We treat all weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological, etc) as nuclear weapons and will retaliate if they are used against us. What possible form will retaliation take if drones alone are enough to execute a complete decapitation strike at just about every level of government overnight?

There's more at the link.  Go read it all.

He poses an excellent question, to which (I suspect) nobody in the US government has developed any concrete, practical response as yet.  Perhaps they should move faster on that . . .

Peter

One of the last Special Forces veterans of World War II has left us

 

Jack Mann was probably the last surviving member of the Long Range Desert Group in World War II.  If you haven't heard of the LRDG, they were one of the first so-called "Special Forces" units in any Allied nation during that war, and helped to establish successor units such as the Special Air Service and numerous others.

The LRDG never numbered more than 350 men, all of whom were volunteers.

The LRDG was formed specifically to carry out deep penetration, covert reconnaissance patrols and intelligence missions from behind Italian lines, although they sometimes engaged in combat operations. Because the LRDG were experts in desert navigation, they were sometimes assigned to guide other units, including the Special Air Service and secret agents across the desert. During the Desert Campaign between December 1940 and April 1943, the vehicles of the LRDG operated constantly behind the Axis lines, missing a total of only 15 days during the entire period. Possibly their most notable offensive action was during Operation Caravan, an attack on the town of Barce and its associated airfield, on the night of 13 September 1942. However, their most vital role was the 'Road Watch', during which they clandestinely monitored traffic on the main road from Tripoli to Benghazi, transmitting the intelligence to British Army Headquarters.

With the surrender of the Axis forces in Tunisia in May 1943, the LRDG changed roles and moved operations to the eastern Mediterranean, carrying out missions in the Greek islands, Italy and the Balkans. After the end of the war in Europe, the leaders of the LRDG made a request to the War Office for the unit to be transferred to the Far East to conduct operations against the Japanese Empire. The request was declined and the LRDG was disbanded in August 1945.

There's more at the link.

Jack Mann had a fascinating and varied career.  Here are some excerpts from his obituary.

Jack Mann, who has died aged 100, served with the SAS and the Special Boat Service (SBS) and was believed to be the last surviving member of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG).

Mann volunteered to join the LRDG as a radio operator in January 1943 ... Mann was responsible for receiving and deciphering the double-coded messages that directed operations over great distances.

Using modified No 11 sets, housed in cabinets on Chevrolet and Ford trucks, he had to contend with high desert temperatures and sandstorms which degraded equipment and disrupted incoming signals. As the enemy's range-finding equipment became more sophisticated, transmissions became increasingly hazardous.

The LRDG made the desert their accomplice. Their patrols believed that they could always outwit the Axis forces on the ground. Mann, however, hated the desert. "Don't talk to me about sand," he used to say. "I've had it in my eyes, my mouth, up my nose, in my food, everywhere."

. . .

Mann subsequently moved to Nahariya, the base camp of the Special Raiding Forces, and transferred to the newly formed Special Boat Service as a radio operator – one of its original members ... Mann was seconded to the Greek Sacred Squadron, which had trained with the SAS and seen action in North Africa. The Squadron used small boats and took part in hit-and-run amphibious operations against German garrisons in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Aegean Sea and the Dodecanese islands ... Mann was involved in reconnaissance missions using kayaks and a camouflaged hide-out near Bodrum on the Turkish coast. On other raids, Royal Navy motor torpedo boats and launches took members of the squadron to Turkey, where they were transferred to fishing caiques. Their rations were sometimes supplemented by wild boar, and fish dynamited in the sea.

. . .

One night, Mann was asleep in his hide-out on the island of Chios when he and a comrade were awakened by a German "E" Boat, a fast motor torpedo boat, approaching the shore. The two men, armed with rifles but in their underwear, greeted the German crew in Greek. The crew surrendered but they tried to be friendly, claiming that they were all Anglo-Saxons. Mann retorted that he was a Jew, ordered them to cut off their swastika badges and had them placed in the local prison. There they were made to clean a local building of faeces left by the occupying German forces.

. . .

As a Jew, he had been determined to fight the Nazis, and then to help the Jewish diaspora and displaced Jews of Europe when the war ended. In November 1947, the UN passed a resolution to divide British-ruled Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states.

Israel declared independence in May 1948. Arab armies invaded in what became known as the Arab-Israeli War and Mann joined the conflict to help establish a state of Israel. He was given the rank of major and put in charge of the Southern Front.

During a crisis in which he had to get to HQ urgently, he commandeered Moshe Dayan's jeep. Ignoring the fact that the commander of the important Jerusalem Front was sitting in it, he ordered the driver to take him straight to HQ.

. . .

He remained closely involved with the veteran associations of the Special Forces in which he had served, and at his funeral his coffin was escorted by standard-bearers from the SAS Regimental Association, the SBS Association and the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women.

Again, more at the link.

I heard many stories of the LRDG, the original SAS in the Western Desert, and the SBS in the Dodecanese campaign and subsequent events, from my father, who served with the Royal Air Force during those same campaigns.  He met several members of all those groups on various occasions while arranging support missions, both resupply and attack operations.  He said that they almost all smelled vile (due to lack of water in the desert for personal hygiene), were extremely rude about official bureaucratic requirements, and "fought like the Devil himself at the drop of a hat, and would drop it themselves if nobody else would"!  Their consumption of beer was likewise legendary, because they could seldom get any in the field, so made up for it when in a town or city by drinking more than one bar dry every night.

Such men were the "Founding Fathers", as it were, of almost all US and European Special Forces units during and after World War II.  I daresay our own members of the SEALs, Delta Force, the Ranger units, the Green Berets, and other related outfits would be happy to raise a glass to the memory of Jack Mann and his comrades in arms.  One hopes they were reunited on the other side of the river - preferably near a well-supplied pub!

Peter

Autonomous drones: looks like I was right

 

A week ago I put up an article titled "Drone warfare developments - it's a scary future".  In it, I looked at autonomous AI-guided drones that found targets with a minimum of human input, then made the kill/no-kill decision on their own without a "man-in-the-loop" to make the final call.

It's happening already.

Three Ukrainian civilians were slaughtered by Russian drones that were guided by artificial intelligence, marking an ominous escalation in warfare’s robotic age.

Tetiana Bubynets, 19, a university student, and two others were blown to bits last month at a gas station in the city of Zaporizhzhia by a drone outfitted with an experimental artificial intelligence system that decides, without a human operator, where to strike, the New York Times reported.

The drone, which looked like a model airplane, was programmed to fly towards the gas station, but once it closed in, an AI system autonomously chose its target — most likely propane tanks —  based on its training to recognize such objects, experts and military officials told the paper.

“This is a risk for the whole world,” said Col. Serhiy Minaiev, the commander of Ukrainian air defenses in Zaporizhzhia.

“In a few years, we will be living in a ‘Terminator’ movie. It’s no joke. Machines are making decisions to strike.”

Debris recovered from the gas station and other strike sites around the city revealed that the drones were running on Nvidia minicomputers that determined where the drone would detonate, officials and experts said.

There's more at the link, including photographs of Russia's autonomous AI-guided drone.

What's particularly ominous about that report is that the drone deliberately targeted three civilians, who would not have been wearing uniform and would not have been in a military location.  Instead, they were at a "gas station", where "an AI system autonomously chose its target — most likely propane tanks —  based on its training to recognize such objects".  Those three civilian deaths can't be classed as "collateral damage", as so many official statements so often label such incidents.  They were deliberate damage, selected by the AI in accordance with its programming, because they happened to be convenient targets to spread terror and fear among the local populace.  Furthermore, the NVIDIA chips powering those Russian drones are officially not allowed to be exported to that country . . . but they got there anyway.  If governments can smuggle them through embargoes, so can non-governmental threat groups and criminals.  It's not all that difficult to do.

What's worse is that AI-driven drone technology, and the tactics to use it, are now spreading from Ukraine and Russia to the rest of the world.  For example, Finland is buying and using Ukrainian drone technology, and hiring battlefield-experienced Ukrainian experts to show them how to use it.

Finland is directly integrating Ukrainian battlefield data into its defense industrial base, with President Alexander Stubb emphasizing that Kyiv possesses unprecedented expertise in modern high-intensity warfare.

Speaking on the strategic value of frontline data, Stubb noted that Ukraine holds more real-world combat insights than the rest of Europe combined. Helsinki is now actively applying these hard-learned lessons across its defense sector, drawing critical data on the tactical deployment of drones, missile systems, unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), and combat casualty care under modern fire conditions.

By systematically absorbing Ukraine’s operational data into Nordic defense manufacturing, Helsinki is rapidly adapting NATO’s northern flank to modern, sensor-saturated combat without having to learn those lessons through direct conflict.

Again, more at the link in the X thread - read the many comments from others.  Nor is Finland alone in such measures.  As mentioned last week, a US company is now supplying Ukraine with AI guidance systems for its drone hardware, making them much more deadly on the battlefield.  I've seen reports from at least a dozen countries talking about how they need to learn from Ukraine, and/or buy drone hardware and software from Ukraine, in order to ensure their own national security.  (One of them is Taiwan, which is arming itself to repel a threatened Chinese invasion.  Imagine what a cross-beach amphibious landing would suffer, in terms of both lives and matériel, if it were attacked by a hundred thousand or more autonomous drones before even one enemy soldier had set foot on shore!  Needless to say, China isn't terribly enthusiastic about this.)

It's time we all faced up to the reality of this threat - not just from nations, but from terrorists, and cross-border criminal enterprises such as drug cartels, and even from internal dissident groups such as ANTIFA, BLM and others.  Many of them are extremists, and won't hesitate to garner publicity for their cause by murdering their opponents, or anyone whom they perceive as an enemy.  Think how this might impact routine law enforcement activities.

• A drug cartel in Mexico might find it useful to send a few autonomous drones across the border to attack local, state and federal patrols, so they could sneak their illegal wares into the USA under cover of all the fuss as law enforcement tries to help its comrades.  They're already murdering their own police in Mexico, so why should they hesitate to do the same to ours?
• Rival gangs such as the Crips, the Bloods, the Mexican Mafia, etc. would probably not hesitate to use such weapons against each other (and possibly even against local law enforcement agencies) in their ongoing, never-ending fight to control urban territory for their criminal activities.
• Extremist political groups could use them to attack rival groups and/or individuals.  For example, Charlie Kirk was killed by a sniper while addressing a public gathering.  What if a future speaker could be killed by a high-explosive autonomous drone?  The "shooter" could launch it from several miles away, and be in little or no danger of detection or arrest.

Those are just a few possible examples, and they're all entirely feasible.  I think that in as little as three to five years from now, we're going to see attacks on civilian targets by autonomous drones in many countries, from who knows how many sources.  There's no guarantee that we, personally, might not become a victim of them.

Peter

Drone warfare developments - it's a scary future

 

Many of my readers doubtless took note of a report earlier this month about a US-Ukrainian military exercise earlier this year.

Ukrainian drone teams demolished a brigade of US Army tanks and armored vehicles during a live war game held this year—but the US soldiers were lucky enough to get “respawn” attempts while learning from the experience.

The semiannual military exercise, called Combined Resolve, gave the US military a firsthand taste of how modern drone warfare has evolved on the battlefields of Ukraine. The Ukrainian drone operators participating in the exercise were easily able to spot and destroy US armored vehicles by mimicking the actions of dropping bombs from above or moving close enough to simulate a kamikaze strike, according to US officials and a participant who spoke with The Wall Street Journal.

. . .

... by repeating the training scenario throughout the two-week exercise, US Army troops got better at figuring out how to disperse and hide from the drones while using countermeasures such as electronic warfare.

The US military is not alone in learning such lessons from battle-hardened Ukrainian drone operators.

Ukrainian drone teams also participated in a Swedish-led military exercise for NATO, called Aurora 26, that was also held in May. A mock mechanized assault by NATO tanks and infantry fighting vehicles allowed Ukrainian drones to take out dozens of the attacking armored vehicles, which eventually forced planners to reset the war game, The Kyiv Independent reported.

There's more at the link.

While trying to find out more, I came across this 45-minute video article from Deutsche Welle.  Itfeatures both a drone operator's perspective (a British soldier fighting for Ukraine) and drone casualties speaking of it from their point of view.  It also goes into how the technology is developing, and how China already has a commanding lead in the field.  As wars become more widespread, what will this mean for soldiers?  I recommend the report very highly if you aren't up to date with recent developments.

The technological advances referred to in the video report are already making headlines.  Earlier this month, we learned that US AI technology is now "enhancing" conventional Ukrainian drones.

In mid-July, the Ukrainian military began receiving Shrike drones made by the Ukrainian company SkyFall equipped with AI-powered autonomy hardware and software developed by the US company Auterion. The companies plan to deliver 50,000 drones equipped with Auterion’s Skynode S strike kits in the coming months.

That allows human operators to manually fly the Shrike first-person view (FPV) drones into a battlefield area, designate a target up to half a mile away, and then “flip the switch to turn it into fire-and-forget terminal guidance mode,” Lorenz Meier, co-founder and CEO of Auterion, told Ars.

The operator can abort a strike or choose a different target as long as they have a radio signal connection with the drone, Meier explained. But the drone can still automatically track and fly into targets without any human guidance, even if it loses its connection with the operator due to buildings or terrain blocking the signal or because of enemy jamming on the same radio frequencies.

To home in on targets, Auterion’s software relies solely on the visual information available from the Shrike drone’s main onboard camera. That means the Shrike drones can track and strike moving targets without any reliance on GPS—a crucial advantage on modern battlefields, where GPS jamming has also become common.

Again, more at the link.

When I think back on my own days in uniform, I can only be devoutly grateful that we didn't have to face such devices on African battlefields almost half a century ago.  I think my odds of surviving such combat would have been a whole lot lower if they'd been around!

The scary thing, to my mind, is that all this technology has already devolved to individual user level, in manufacturing as much as in operation.  A private person can buy just about all the drone propulsion and guidance technology used in military battlefield drones, and assemble his own versions.  A warhead isn't difficult to devise, given a little chemical knowledge and/or access to stolen military or commercial explosives.  What might happen if a well-organized terrorist outfit such as Al Qaeda or ISIS, or their various and sundry offshoots, were able to get hold of drone "swarming" technology and launch fifty or a hundred explosive drones against a major target?  I'm thinking sports stadiums, or government buildings, or even key targets such as the President when he's traveling by vehicle.  What if some of the drones could try to obstruct the takeoff or landing of the Presidential aircraft?  What if they did the same to a normal commercial flight, potentially causing hundreds of casualties and disrupting the entire air transport network for who knows how long?

I fear we haven't even begun to witness how dangerous such technology might be in the wrong hands.

Peter

Is the UAE taking combat warship lessons from Israel?

 

Some years ago, I said about the Israeli Navy:

I like the Israeli approach, which crams lots of hitting power into even small hulls (see, for example, its Sa'ar 5 class corvettes, which as far as I know are the most heavily armed ships of their size [just over 1,000 tons] anywhere in the world, and on an armament-per-ton or tons-per-weapon basis might be the most heavily armed warships since the age of the dreadnought).

That approach has since been epitomized even more in Israel's Sa'ar 6 corvettes, almost twice the displacement of the earlier Sa'ar 5's, but even more heavily armed.  There are probably more weapons and weapon systems aboard a Sa'ar 6 than aboard any two, or even three, typical NATO frigates.

I thought about this when reading an article about the new Falaj 3 class "patrol boats" of the United Arab Emirates.  Their displacement is only about 670 tons, but they've packed an awful lot of firepower into that small hull.

Photos of the United Arab Emirates’ Falaj 3 class patrol boat are a reminder that a vessel doesn’t need to be a corvette or even a frigate to be armed like one. At a little over 200 feet long, the Falaj 3 is officially designated an offshore patrol vessel (OPV), but it boasts a weapons suite that would be impressive on a missile corvette and, in some respects, even a light frigate. In fact, at around 670 tons full load displacement, and a crew of just 39, it may be one of the most heavily armed warships anywhere in the world for its size.

OPVs are generally built for constabulary duties rather than high-end naval combat. Their primary missions include enforcing exclusive economic zones, countering piracy and smuggling, fisheries protection, search and rescue, and humanitarian assistance. As a result, they typically prioritize endurance, seakeeping, and low operating costs over heavy armament. Many Western designs in this category carry little more than a medium-caliber gun and a handful of remotely operated weapon systems, with no dedicated anti-ship missiles or significant air-defense systems.

The Falaj 3 takes a very different approach, as is immediately apparent from these photos.

Forward sits a Leonardo 76mm OTO Super Rapid gun equipped with the STRALES guided ammunition system, giving the ship a weapon capable of engaging everything from surface targets to fast-moving aerial threats ... Directly behind the gun is an eight-cell vertical launch system loaded with MBDA VL MICA surface-to-air missiles. This ‘fire and forget’ missile can intercept targets at a range of up to around 12 miles and at altitudes of up to 30,000 feet.  Further aft is a 21-cell Raytheon Mk 49 launcher for the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM), giving the vessel a second, independent layer of point air defense. Most OPVs are fortunate to carry an adapted man-portable air defense system, if they have any dedicated air-defense system at all.

The offensive fit is equally notable. Four MM40 Exocet Block 3C anti-ship missiles provide over-the-horizon strike capability, while two 12-cell Low-cost Guided Imaging Rocket (LOGIR) guided rocket launchers offer an inexpensive way to engage drones, uncrewed surface vessels, and fast attack craft without expending much more costly missiles ... Completing the package are two Electro Optic Systems (EOS) R400-M 30mm remote weapon stations and two 32-barrel Rheinmetall Multi Ammunition Soft-kill System (MASS) decoy launchers, providing close-range firepower and survivability against incoming guided weapons, respectively.

There's more at the link.

I entirely agree with a powerful weapons load-out like that.  It remains a perennial worry to some naval observers (including me) that so many corvettes, frigates and destroyers in US and European service are relatively lightly armed for their size.  There isn't enough depth to their defenses, particularly if they face a swarm of incoming drones or missiles.  If they miss even one, they may suffer severe, disabling damage.  They can't even reload missiles at sea, meaning that in a serious engagement, they'd shoot themselves dry in a relatively short space of time.  After that . . . they're expensive targets.  (Compare them to their equivalents in the former Soviet Union and/or the Russian Navy today.  The Russians have not forgotten the lessons of history, and arm their ships accordingly.  See, for example, that nation's Steregushchiy and Gremyashchiy classes.)

I hope the example of the Falaj 3 class of patrol vessels is studied, and spreads.  We live in an increasingly dangerous world, particularly the ocean passages through narrow straits like Hormuz, Bab-el-Mandeb, etc.  To defend them, we need larger numbers of considerably more powerful vessels than have so far been employed.  Air power has its place, of course, but in the end ships at sea are like infantry on the ground.  You need them to take and hold strategic areas.

Peter

The Saudi nuclear program: what else did anyone expect?

 

I'm cynically amused by the brouhaha over the US deal with Saudi Arabia to help that country develop a peaceful - underline, peaceful - nuclear energy program, including (it seems) enriching nuclear fuel.

Consider the facts of the current situation, in no particular order.

• Saudi Arabia bankrolled much of Pakistan's nuclear program, including its nuclear warheads and missiles.  It's long been rumored among "those in the know" that Pakistan has guaranteed Saudi Arabia that it can have nuclear warheads at twenty-four hours' notice, in an emergency.
• Saudi Arabia has bought Chinese ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads.  By strange coincidence, they're the same type of ballistic missiles that Pakistan has in its nuclear silos.  Odd, that . . .
• Iran has launched missile attacks on Saudi Arabian territory from the north, using cruise and ballistic missiles.  Its Houthi allies have done the same from Yemen in the south.  That would be enough to make any nation a little paranoid.  What if the Iranian Revolutionary Islamic Guard, or whatever it calls itself these days, were to figure out how to put nuclear payloads on those missiles - either a full-blown nuke warhead, or a "dirty nuke" using conventional explosives to spread radioactive material around, say, Riyadh or a major military base?
• Israel has for decades maintained that it will neither confirm nor deny that it has nuclear weapons.  Anyone with two working brain cells to rub together is quite confident that they have more than a few, almost certainly including major thermonuclear weapons.  See my comments in these pages from time to time concerning the so-called "Vela incident".
• Given those various and sundry realities and threats, it was obvious that Saudi Arabia was going to go ahead and greatly expand its nuclear program(s).  It didn't really have any choice but to do so, if it was to survive in an environment like that.

That being the case, why is anybody surprised that President Trump would try to get involved with Saudi Arabia's plans and help them along?  Saudi was going to do it anyway.  We could have sat there and criticized, or expressed concern, or whatever - which would have bounced off Saudi's national interests like water off a duck's back.  This was a case of making the best of two very difficult and unpalatable choices, and I think the President acted wisely.  I'm sure he, and the US establishment, would rather not have made that choice, but as I said earlier, this was going to happen whether or not we were involved.

As for the fat-headed reports that the President was/is at odds with his Energy Secretary over what was done, and how it was done . . . yeah, right.  As if any Secretary in the President's cabinet is going to land a surprise like that on his boss's desk, without so much as a "by your leave"!  Sure, there may have been friction in the give-and-take between the White House and the Energy Department, but what else is new?  The very fact that the Energy Secretary still has his job is sufficient evidence that any such friction was relatively minor.

I'm also enjoying outraged suggestions from the left that the President is trying to stretch the agreement in new ways by pressuring Saudi Arabia to accept the Abraham Accords in exchange for US nuclear help.  There's nothing new in this:  President Trump has been trying to persuade Saudi Arabia to sign on to the Accords ever since he took office.  It might be a very useful talking point to mention that if Israel finds Saudi Arabia diplomatically cooperative, some of the former's nuclear warheads may no longer needed to be targeted at the Arabian peninsula.  In Saudi's position, I'd find that a very thought-provoking consideration . . .

Overall, I think America joining Saudi's nuclear program as a partner nation has far more positives than negatives.  It will also make Iran rethink its nuclear ambitions, given that the existing Saudi-Pakistan nuclear relationship might put them between two actinic fires, so to speak.

What's next in the Middle East?  Your guess is as good as mine . . . but it's likely to be "interesting", in the sense of the fabled ancient Chinese curse!

Peter

Be careful what you pick up on or near a battlefield...

 

There's a video on X.com showing a Russian army officer opening some of the candies and chocolate that have been found in the battle zones in Ukraine.  If you're logged into X, here's the link.  If you aren't a member of X, here's an alternative link that will let you play the video.  The candy is loaded with explosives and a detonator, proving that too many sweets really are bad for you!

There are plenty of comments following the video that are worth reading.  My favorite is from user Bitcoin Wizard - mavensbot:

"I'm starting to think that these processed foods are not healthy."

You can say that again!

Peter

Is the tank dead on today's battlefield? Two perspectives

 

During my military service, I was never involved with tanks (or any other armored vehicle), apart from hitching a ride on one now and again.  I also had a couple of Soviet-built tanks shooting at my position once upon a time, which was most unpleasant.  Fortunately they went away without doing too much damage.

Be that as it may, the advent of drone warfare has made many question whether the tank has a future or not.  That question has been asked before, of course, particularly when the first anti-tank missiles made their appearance in the 1950's.  Those early missiles might have been buggy, clumsy and not very accurate, but if they hit what they were aimed at, the results tended to be unpleasant for those inside.  (I can remember the first-generation French ENTAC missile, which was used by South Africa along with later-generation MILAN missiles.  The former was a bit of a dog.  The latter was very successful, and very useful.)

Two articles over the past week, both by British authors and focused around British and NATO equipment, have examined the issue anew.  First:  "On Nato’s border with Russia, I witnessed the death of tank warfare".

Last week Latvia's military chief warned that Moscow has gained an edge over Nato in drone warfare and could exploit Europe's slow rearmament drive and invade the Baltics by 2028.

Nato commanders now face a looming crisis: learning how to fight on a 21st-century battlefield dominated by AI-assisted drones that can rapidly spot and target tanks and military vehicles from the skies.

. . .

Traditionally, the frontlines were ruled by tanks. Acting as armoured juggernauts, they were able to punch through enemy defences with firepower.

And while military planners still believe tanks have a place in war, some have questioned whether they are able to hold ground as they did in the past.

. . .

Across Ukraine, drones account for more than 90 per cent of battlefield casualties, the vast majority being tanks and armoured vehicles.

The enormous task of overcoming this modern threat faces commanders from across Nato, as allied nations scramble to re-equip their militaries and stockpile weapons systems capable of defending against the inevitable drone onslaught that will dominate the wars of the future.

. . .

To combat the threat posed by Russia, Nato has set up the eastern flank deterrence line (EFDI), to defend its border from Finland to Romania.

It is like a modern-day Maginot Line, an ill-fated series of fortifications built by France in the 1930s but which failed to stop Nazi Germany from invading in the Second World War.

However, Nato chiefs are confident the EFDI will be able to hold, using AI-enabled targeting and autonomous systems to destroy assaulting troops and vehicles in a kill zone stretching hundreds of miles.

"We have changed our exercises to directly rehearse how we will fight," said Gen Christopher Donahue, the commander of US Army Europe & Africa.

. . .

Currently, the Army has around 6,000 drones in its arsenal. However, it is understood these could be depleted within a week in a war with Russia. Soldiers say the pace of drone delivery needs to increase, describing the kit as "absolute game-changers".

"We need to get them rolled out like now. I can't emphasise it enough," said Cpl John Mackenzie, 27, who was training in Finland.

There's more at the link.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former tank officer, has a different view.  His article is titled "The tank isn’t dead. It’s just changing."

In the drone-infested battlefields of Ukraine, and across Nato exercises increasingly dominated by unmanned systems, it is easy to conclude that the tank's days are numbered. The burnt-out wrecks of Russian armour scattered across the Donbass seem to provide compelling evidence.

Yet history urges caution. Since the first great tank battle at Cambrai in 1917, commentators, academics and journalists have repeatedly declared the death of the tank. Every time, they have been proven wrong.

. . .

Reducing our ability to conduct armoured manoeuvre warfare would undermine one of the fundamental pillars of land combat, a principle that has endured since the First World War and arguably much longer. An even greater error would be to procure digitally enabled platforms such as Challenger 3 and Ajax without fully funding the active protection systems and hard-kill defensive suites required for them to survive on a battlefield saturated with drones and autonomous weapons.

. . .

The [Strategic Defence Review] correctly recognises that warfare is changing. It estimates that 80 per cent of future battlefield lethality will come from drones and autonomous systems, with only 20 per cent delivered by traditional platforms such as Challenger 3, Ajax and attack helicopters.

The implication is clear: there will be far more unmanned systems and far fewer manned vehicles. The British Army's future force of 148 Challenger 3 tanks is in stark contrast to the nearly 700 main battle tanks in service when I joined the Army 37 years ago. Back then, drones did not exist.

The future battlefield will include robotic combat vehicles. Challenger 3 must therefore operate as the command node of a wider digital combat system, controlling a family of drones and autonomous platforms that enhance both its lethality and survivability.

. . .

Tanks have always been vulnerable when operating without infantry support. The lesson has not changed. Tanks must be protected by infantry. Today, they must also be protected by drones and defended against them.

Again, more at the link.

I suspect the real problem is going to be economics.  If a $24 million [Wikipedia's figure] Abrams M1A2 SEPv3 tank can be taken out by a few drones costing less than $5,000 each (possibly much less than that), what's the point of spending that $24 million on one tank instead of four or five thousand drones?  There is a point, of course, from a military perspective, but what's a politician going to think (and say)?  How can he justify the larger expense to his constituents when they're clamoring to save money on defense and spend it on entitlement programs?  That's the cold, hard reality of politics in almost every NATO country right now, and the USA is no exception.

The same arithmetic affects almost every branch of military expenditure right now.  For example, a friend served in an artillery battery with the US Marine Corps.  His M777 howitzer costs $3.7 million apiece (according to one source).  Medium- to long-range drones, accurate enough to hit their targets first time, every time, and even to fly into buildings to run down their exact target, cost about $10,000 apiece from Western manufacturers right now.  Thus, the cost of one M777 cannon, without ammunition, would instead buy up to 400 drones of equivalent terminal performance to an artillery shell, with their warheads built in.  Is it any wonder that the USMC (and many other armed forces around the world) are either considering, or already actively engaged in, reducing their artillery forces while increasing their drone forces?

I'm sure many of my readers have sufficient expertise and experience to weigh in.  What say you, friends?

Peter

A military procurement nightmare: Britain's Typhoon fighter and its successor

 

In a long and very detailed article, Lewis Page argues that "Britain’s next-generation fighter jet is a disaster in the making".  He goes into detail on the background to the present project, and the aircraft that have preceded it in Royal Air Force service.  It's far too long an article to reproduce here, so I've selected as an example just one cost comparison between the current front-line aircraft of the US and UK air forces.

The Eurofighter Typhoon, as flown by the RAF, is the most expensive tactical aircraft ever built by the human race. When the last Tranche 1 planes are gone next year (disposed of with half their lifetime hours unused) the RAF will possess 107 aircraft.

Recent statements reveal that the size of an RAF front-line squadron has fallen from 12 to “up to 10” jets. Officials have recently congratulated themselves that they typically have “65 to 70” Typhoons “available” nowadays for the seven RAF front-line Typhoon squadrons that exist on paper.

Some more Typhoons are in the training and test units but it’s clear that others, probably more than 20, are in a long-term un-flyable condition: in deep maintenance, with parts robbed from them to get others flying, or both.

Each of the 107 Typhoons, according to the National Audit Office, cost well over £215m to obtain in 2011 money, or around $355m (£264m) if we use contemporary exchange rates.

By comparison, the undisputed, most powerful fighter jet in the world is the US Air Force’s F-22 Raptor. Only 183 Raptors were made in the end, as opposed to the 600-plus Eurofighters so far.

But despite this much shorter production run and the fact that it is an entire generation more advanced than a Typhoon, the acquisition cost of one Raptor to the US taxpayer was somewhat lower than the cost of one Typhoon to the UK taxpayer. The Raptor throws into stark relief the almost unbelievably bad value for money offered by the Typhoon.

In short, the Typhoon was a procurement disaster.

There's much more at the link.  Highly recommended reading for aviation and military enthusiasts.

The article helps us understand why military hardware has become so expensive.  The deadweight of bureaucratic and political control interfered so much with the Typhoon's development, and the lack of vision among military leaders in making it a single-purpose rather than a multi-role aircraft, effectively doomed it to operational irrelevance for much of its service life.  Furthermore, the astronomical costs of not just each aircraft, but spare parts to keep it flying, wasted so much of the Royal Air Force budget that funds were not available for different types of aircraft, or urgently needed upgrades.  (For example, for the past two decades almost every major frontline strike fighter has had AESA radar, offering vastly improved performance over older types:  but the RAF's Typhoons are only now beginning to get one - and, at that, only enough to fit to less than half the fleet.  Without it, if they had had to fight against other modern fighters, they would have been at a huge disadvantage.)

I suppose we could draw parallels between Britain's fighters and the US Navy's ships.  The USN has had so many problems developing new designs that it's had to scrap almost all of them as being too complex and/or too expensive, after its "experts" had spent years gold-plating them and adding every feature they could think of.  It's now been forced to bodge together a "frigate" that is basically a slightly more heavily armed Coast Guard cutter, because the much more sophisticated Constellation class frigates have had to be abandoned due to their design becoming bogged down in excessive complexity.  Will something similar happen to Britain's proposed new fighter aircraft?  I think there's a very good chance that it will.

China is producing new aircraft and ship designs in multiples every year, and building them by the dozens.  One hopes that both Britain and the USA will wake up to reality and start moving faster . . . but if the politicians insist on sticking their oar in, that's not very likely.  Can Secretary of War Hegseth cut through the entrenched bureaucracy and layers of control that have bedeviled US military design?  That remains to be seen.

Peter

The lower the cost, the easier the proliferation

 

I was struck today by the title of an article:

10,000 Low-Cost Cruise Missiles In Three Years

Procurement Plan Laid Out By Pentagon

You can read the details for yourself at the link.  Of particular food for thought to me was this:  if "low-cost cruise missiles" are now a mainstream item, how long can it be before they become cheap enough - and easy enough - to be manufactured almost anywhere?  And, if and when that happens, how long will it take renegade religious or tribal groups (e.g. the Houthis in Yemen), or terrorist organizations (e.g. Hezbollah, ISIS, Al Qaeda, etc.) to start manufacturing their own equivalents?

It's not as hard as it sounds.  Remember Bruce Simpson?  More than two decades ago, he designed and built a low-cost cruise missile (LCCM) in his home garage, using off-the-shelf components bought from Internet retailers.  He wrote an article about how easy it was to do it, including the following excerpt:

... during the past decade, huge strides have been made in commercializing much of the technology on which the cruise missile is based and it is my firm belief that building a low-cost, autonomous, self-guided, air-breathing missile with a significant payload capability is now well within the reach of almost any person or small group of persons with the necessary knowledge and skills.

Targeting/Guidance

As mentioned above, one of the key components of a cruise missile's guidance system is a mil-spec satellite-based GPS system.

Today, compact, high quality, high accuracy GPS receivers are readily available for just a few hundred dollars. The inclusion of an easily used computer interface in many of these units makes them well suited for use in a low-cost cruise missile (LCCM).

While the GPS provides information necessary for tracking waypoints and identifying the final destination, smaller course corrections (for stability) can be provided by the solid-state gyro systems now readily available for use in model helicopters and aircraft.

Instantaneous measurement of altitude and groundspeed can be provided by a semi-forward looking radar and doppler radar units (possibly built around components such as these and these. This allows the LCCM to fly lower than would be possible if relying solely on GPS and offers a degree of contour-hugging even when the exact nature of the terrain is not available.

The gyroscopic and radar-based systems could also provide an inertial backup guidance facility in the event that the GPS system was lost, blocked or simply turned off when an attack by such LCCMs was imminent or underway.

Onboard Computing

As Moore's law continues to produce a rapid rise in the speed and fall in the cost of computer chips, we've already reached the point where obtaining sufficient number crunching capability is no longer difficult or expensive.

Single-board computer systems are another readily available off the shelf component that can be recruited for use in an LCCM. Even the sophisticated realitime operating systems necessary for supporting the type of software needed to interface the guidance/targeting systems to the control servos are just a download away.

. . .

The total component costs for an LCCM (less payload) could be as little as $6,000 for the smallest, simplest version, with a larger, more sophisticated design still requiring little more than $10,000 worth of parts and materials.

There's more at the link.

That technical data, and those prices, date back to May 2002 - twenty-four years ago this month.  In those intervening years, components have become much, much smaller and lighter, much more capable, and much cheaper.  They're still freely available as elements of radio-controlled models (aircraft, boats, vehicles, whatever).  Plastic sheeting, 3D printed components, and ultra-light structural elements are easy to buy and often just as easy to make yourself.  Heck, people have built and flown in ultralight aircraft made out of packaging cardboard!  I'd say it's likely the cost to home-build a LCCM today might well be less than $2,000, and at most $3,000.  Cargo delivery drones can be even cheaper:  for example, a drone capable of delivering 20-odd pounds at a range of 6+ miles costs only a little over $500 in quantity.  Longer range?  Heavier cargo capacity?  No problem.  A warhead would be extra, of course, but with the advent of powerful "home-brewed" explosives, a warhead strong enough to demolish the average house - but still small and light enough to be carried by a LCCM or light delivery drone - could probably be assembled in a domestic bathroom or kitchen.

So, if our armed forces are talking about buying thousands of low-cost cruise missiles, what are the odds that terrorist and/or extremist groups aren't planning on doing exactly the same thing?  How would we defend against such simple, terrifying weapons if a wave of them were launched into the average American city?  It could be done by driving a rented truck or trucks to a suitable launch site, a few miles from the target zone (e.g. a park or golf course, particularly at night, or putting them onto a boat a couple of miles offshore);  erecting a wire or wood frame to hold the missiles at an appropriate angle for launch, and aimed in the right direction;  and setting them off at the chosen time.  Unless the perpetrators were seen during the preparation phase, it's doubtful they'd be detected in time to stop them;  and once the missiles had been fired, they'd simply abandon the trucks and drive away in other inconspicuous vehicles.  For that matter, they may not care about getting away.  They may have a martyrdom mentality that would welcome a final shootout with the cops (on television, of course, for the whole world to see).

That scenario is entirely feasible and practical.  I think we've got a whole new threat to our security to consider.  What we can do about it (if anything) remains to be seen.

Peter

The economic consequences of the Iran war begin to make themselves felt

 

I hasten to note that the United States is likely to experience rather less severe economic consequences from the Iran war than most other parts of the world.  We produce much of our own raw material needs, and export a great deal to other nations.  First World nations and those with large financial reserves will still be able to get much of what they need, but Third World countries that can't afford higher prices are likely to be outbid for the available supply.  They're going to find themselves in a very difficult situation.

The problem is not just fuel, but also the raw materials made from (or using) fuel that are in turn used to manufacture the refined and/or manufactured products that the world wants to buy.  In two recent articles, Jay Martin sums up some of the problems.  First, he looks at fuel and related products.

The International Energy Agency has called [the closure of the Strait of Hormuz] the greatest global energy security threat in history.

The consequences are spreading like cracks in a windshield. Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex - the largest liquefied natural gas plant on Earth, responsible for supplying fuel to dozens of countries - has suffered extensive missile damage, knocking out 17% of Qatar’s LNG export capacity for up to five years.

Taiwan, which relies on LNG for 40% of its electricity, has an eleven-day emergency stockpile.

Australia has lowered its diesel quality standards and watched hundreds of petrol stations run dry.

Slovenia became the first EU state to introduce fuel rationing.

South Korea is enforcing a five-day vehicle rotation system.

Michael Haigh, the Global Head of Commodities Research at Société Générale - one of the largest banks in Europe - said last week that the final vessels carrying jet fuel to the UK were arriving, and that “there is no more after that.”

Let that sink in. No more jet fuel for the United Kingdom.

Dow Chemical - one of the world’s largest chemical companies, whose products end up in everything from food packaging to medical supplies - doubled its polyethylene price overnight.

Why does that matter?

Polyethylene is in your grocery bags, water bottles, food packaging, medical equipment, and much more. If you bought it at a store, there’s a good chance it touched polyethylene before it reached your hands.

Polyethylene is made from petroleum-based feedstocks, and when Hormuz closed, about 50% of the global polyethylene supply was affected.

They say that when the price of energy goes up, the price of everything goes up. You could say the same thing about polyethylene.

This is how a war in the Middle East shows up at your grocery store. Energy doesn’t stay in the energy sector. It flows through everything you buy, everything you eat, everything you build.

There's more at the link.  He goes on to discuss financial aspects of the crisis.

Second, he shows how supply chain problems "cascade" from Hormuz to the rest of the world.

The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow stretch of water between Iran and Oman through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil, a third of its seaborne natural gas, and the refined fuels, fertilizers, and industrial chemicals that power factories and farms on four continents flow every single day.

What [observers] might miss, is the cascade.

How a fuel tanker that can’t leave the Persian Gulf becomes a factory that can’t run in Korea.

How a factory that can’t run in Korea becomes a product that doesn’t land on a shelf in Seattle.

How your iPhone alone pulls materials and components from five different continents.

. . .

The modern economy is not a collection of countries. It is a single machine. Every country is a gear inside it. And the first gears to jam are usually not the ones people are watching.

In this case, everyone is watching oil.

No one is watching sulphur.

Most people have no reason to think about sulphur. It does not show up in presidential speeches. It does not trend on Twitter. Nobody builds an investment thesis around yellow rocks sitting in a port warehouse.

But sulphur is one of those boring industrial inputs that quietly hold the world together.

You do not need sulphur because it is rare. You need it because modern industry runs on it. Sulphur is used to make sulphuric acid, one of the most important industrial chemicals on earth. Think of sulphuric acid as the solvent, cleaner, and processing agent that helps turn raw materials into usable products.

Farmers use it to make fertilizer. Miners use it to separate metals from rock. Manufacturers use it in everything from batteries to chemicals to refined fuels.

Every economy needs sulphur and the industrial chemicals it helps create. And China manufactures roughly 45 percent of the world’s industrial chemical supply.

China imports much of the sulphur it needs from the Persian Gulf, turns it into the industrial chemicals used in mining, agriculture, and manufacturing, and then sells them to the rest of the world.

That means when the Strait of Hormuz is threatened or closed, China’s access to a raw material it needs to produce the chemicals that the rest of the world depends on becomes compromised.

And when a country runs short of a critical industrial input, it does not behave like a polite global supplier. It acts in self-interest.

First, it protects its own farmers, because fertilizer is food security.

Then it protects its own factories, because factories are employment, exports, tax revenue, and national power.

Then it protects its own strategic industries - batteries, electronics, defence, infrastructure, and energy.

Whatever is left can be sold to the rest of the world.

That is where the cascade begins:

The war in Iran disrupts shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

China runs short on sulphur.

Chinese chemical production falls.

Foreign buyers are pushed to the back of the line, as Beijing has less to share with the global economy.

Mining companies in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia lose access to the chemicals they need to produce metals. And then the price of everything that depends on those metals starts to rise.

. . .

Chile, the world’s largest copper producer...

Indonesia, the world’s largest nickel producer…

Peru, the third-largest copper producer…

Zambia, Africa’s second-largest copper producer…

Every one of them runs on Chinese chemicals - and every one of them is seeing orders slowed, cancelled, or repriced.

That is what “one nation’s shortage is everybody’s problem” looks like in practice.

A war in the Persian Gulf becomes a sulphur shortage in China. A sulphur shortage in China becomes a chemical shortage in the Congo. A chemical shortage in the Congo becomes a copper and cobalt shortage everywhere. And a metals shortage everywhere means higher prices for the battery in your phone, the copper wiring behind the drywall in your house, and the data centers running your favourite AI tool.

That is the cascade.

And we are barely into it.

Again, more at the link.

This is a very real issue.  It will most certainly affect the USA, although, as I said earlier, possibly not so much as other countries.  Some states will fare worse than others.  To name just one example:

The arrival of the last oil tanker carrying crude from the Middle East to California this week has state lawmakers on edge, and an energy expert warning of a gas price “crisis” ... America’s war with Iran has closed off the Strait of Hormuz, and that tanker was the last to depart the region for California before war broke out. The state has no interstate gas pipelines and is heavily reliant on imports.

California will probably have no choice but to suspend its very restrictive fuel refining standards, because refineries in other states aren't set up to support them.  Furthermore, it'll have to buy diesel, gasoline, aviation fuel and any other fuel it needs from anyone who has it, because it has too few refineries to process its own fuel needs.  That fuel will have to be imported on tankers, because there are no interstate fuel pipelines to California:  but with literally hundreds of oil tankers locked up in the Persian Gulf, unable or unwilling to transit the Strait of Hormuz, enough tankers may not be available.  Even if they are, California will have to outbid other states (and foreign nations) who want US refinery output, which will lead to a concertina-like shortage in those states, who will in their turn outbid others, and so on, and so on.  Thus, a California gas problem will rapidly become a US-wide gas problem.  I'm pretty sure prices will go up significantly, and there may be shortages severe enough to require some form of (hopefully temporary) restriction on when, where and how much fuel one can buy.

That's just one example, from one state.  Do your own reading in the financial and industrial media, and you'll find many more.  Yet - we're probably living in the most fortunate nation in the world, in terms of our national ability to cope with an economic crisis of this magnitude.  Spare a thought for those who are less fortunate, particularly the Third World nations that are unlikely to be able to afford enough fuel for their needs, enough fertilizer for their farmers, and even enough food to feed their people.  If they buy food for their people, they won't have the fuel to distribute it.  If they don't buy fertilizer, their crops for the next growing season will be drastically diminished - meaning they'll have to find even more money (that they don't have) to import more food (that they can't grow) . . . and so on, and so on, ad nauseam.

Even if the Iran war is resolved tomorrow, it'll take three to four months at a minimum - more likely six months or even longer - to refill the oil and feedstock supply lines and resume full-scale production.  Don't expect any early relief from the stresses this will place on economies worldwide.

Peter

The early days of drone warfare

 

CDR Salamander noted yesterday that the Iranian Shahed-136 drone was based, at least in part, on a joint US-West German development from the 1980's.  He quotes Wikipedia's description.

In the early 1980s, the United States and West Germany began developing an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed to detect and engage enemy radar systems. The aircraft was also intended to mimic larger aircraft, acting as a decoy to divert enemy fire from manned aircraft. On the German side, Dornier, and later its successor company DASA, was working on the project for the German Air Force.

During the project’s development, a workable seeker head could not be developed, limiting its suitability for the intended anti-radar mission. This, along with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, led to the project’s eventual termination. Following the end of the project, details of the system’s design were sold to Israel, which would develop its own IAI Harpy.

There's more at the link.

That's true, of course, but there was an additional drone being developed at the same time that was also sold to Israel.  It was a South African project known as the Kentron ARD-10 Lark.  The following image and report date from the early 1990's.

At the time, South Africa was becoming increasingly sophisticated in its use of the relatively primitive unmanned aerial vehicles of the time.  I had some peripheral involvement in the electronics being developed for them.  An account of the period includes the following:

Various use must have been made during the following years after 1983, however the next open mention was during the 1987-88 raids into Angola (Operations Modular/Hooper/Packer) in which extensive use was made of UAV's for surveillance, reconnaissance, artillery spotting and more interestingly to lure Soviet SAM batteries out of hiding so that our long range G-5/6 guns could hit them. Two Kentron Seeker systems were lost to the last mentioned tactic, although it was apparently more than worth it - many expensive SAM-8/9/13 were fired attempting to shoot the Seeker's down, in doing so not only did they waste valuable ammunition - but also revealed their positions and many of their Soviet SAM sites were then promptly destroyed by G-5/6 artillery fire (apparently one Seeker survived between 16-17 SAM-8 missiles being fired at it before it was finally shot down).

The latter engagements were during 1987/88.  As a direct result of those engagements, the ARD-10 was developed as a more advanced surveillance and reconnaissance platform, with particular emphasis on forcing enemy radars and air defense ordnance to reveal their position.  However, during the same period South Africa embarked on the process that was to lead to democratic elections in 1994, and the ARD-10 was one of many military projects (including the Carver strike fighter) that were canceled due to the peace conference and the end of the Border War.  Its design was sold to Israel for a relative pittance, probably at about the same time that the US-West German project found the same destination.  There seems little doubt that both of those designs were used as input to Israel's Harpy drone, shown below.

It achieved wide international sales and was prominent in a number of smaller wars.  It was later developed into the much more sophisticated Harop drone, shown below, which in modern versions is pretty much state-of-the-art in its field.  It became prominent due to its success in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020. 

Information available about the Kentron ARD-10, Dornier DAR, and Israeli Harpy drones was undoubtedly studied in Iran, and that country's subsequent Shahed 136 bears an unmistakeable resemblance to them all.  All of those aircraft are relatively backward and primitive compared to modern designs;  but then, for a simple strike drone that can be bought cheaply in large numbers and launched in "swarms" to overwhelm enemy defenses, one doesn't need great sophistication.

Russia manufactures the Shahed 136 under license as the Geran-2, and has apparently developed a jet-propelled version of the drone that flies much faster and higher.  This will be harder to intercept, and if its cost can be kept low enough to afford mass production, may make air defense's job much more difficult.  As long as the cost to intercept the drone can be kept higher than the cost to build and operate the drone, the attacker will have an economic advantage.  We'll have to see whether that remains the case as drone technology advances.  If "stealthy" attack drones can be made cheaply enough (something I'm sure many nations are working on), they may pose a grave threat to almost all air defense systems.

Peter

The Iran war and the global economy

 

The Iran war isn't (yet) having a major impact on the US economy.  Gas prices are up, but not out of control, and since we're self-sufficient in most sources of energy, we're in relatively good shape despite the interruption to oil supplies from the Persian Gulf.  However, many other countries are not so fortunate.  A few examples:

• Fishermen in Ireland are grounding their boats because they can’t afford diesel, thanks to rising prices.
• The Philippines has declared a national emergency over the supply of fuel.  Current estimates are that the country has only enough gasoline for the next 53.14 days; diesel, 45.82 days; kerosene, 97.93 days; jet fuel, 38.62 days; fuel oil, 61.49 days; and liquified petroleum gas, 23.51 days.
• Australian gas stations are running out of gasoline and/or diesel.  "As of mid-March, Australia held roughly 38 days' worth of petrol, 30 days of diesel and 30 days of jet fuel."

One might ask why America should be worried about other countries' fuel problems.  The reason is simple:  because their economies are inextricably tied in with ours.  If our trade partners experience serious economic problems, they'll inevitably affect us too in the long run.  CNBC points out:

Energy and commodities market expert John Kilduff of Again Capital ... said “the numbers are just too big ... This is a 10 to 12 million barrel per day deficit. … really just insurmountable. There’s no policy measure that can be taken. There’s no lever that can be pulled to offset this,” he said.

That is why he thinks the timeframe to be focused on is that post-April 1 date. “If there’s no resolution, if there’s no plan, if there’s no sort of even hopefulness that we can get the Strait reopened, with amassing troops or doing whatever the military has to do to do that,” that is when this becomes an energy crisis, Kilduff said. “By mid-year, you will see shortages in places like India, Japan, and South Korea. They will start to rein in industrial production. They’re going to have to conserve to keep the lights on, literally,” he said. If the military and government do not have good answers by April 1, “The crunch is coming.”

There's more at the link.

Speaking of death and dying, John Donne famously wrote:

Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

When the economic bell is tolling, as it is right now, we'll do well to remember that warning.  We, as individuals, can't do anything about the world situation, but we can do something about our own preparations for hard times and our own resources.  The old proverb says, "Look after the pennies, and the dollars will look after themselves."  In the same way, if we look after the practical preparations we can make from day to day, the longer term will tend to resolve itself, and we'll be better off when it does.

Peter

A very interesting analysis of the Iran war in a worldwide context

 

I'm obliged to Francis Turner for providing a link to an article titled "The Global System Rupture".  It's a very long article, far too long to summarize here;  to get the full impact, you'll have to click over to it and read it for yourself (which I do recommend).  I don't necessarily agree with all the author's points, but I don't think her overall thesis is far wrong.  Let me offer these paragraphs to whet your appetite.

We are not approaching a regional crisis that will be managed and absorbed. We are approaching a global system rupture, driven by cascading effects across every socio-economic network simultaneously: energy, food, water, finance, trade, governance, and security. And while the United States, China, and Russia each occupy a short-term winning position in this rupture, all three are generating the very conditions that could pull the entire system into an abyss from which none of them emerges structurally intact. The path away from that abyss requires something that none of them is currently willing to do alone. It requires coordination between the two rival blocs. And it requires it now.

. . .

The United States, China, and Russia are each winning in the short term. The US has demonstrably degraded Iran’s military infrastructure, eliminated its nuclear programme, and established a new precedent of deterrence in the region. Russia is extracting elevated energy revenues, geopolitical leverage on Ukraine, and a sanctions waiver. China is consolidating yuan settlement architecture, absorbing discounted Iranian crude, and widening its strategic position in the Pacific while the US is pinned in the Gulf. All three actors have short-term incentives that are being satisfied.

And all three are generating the conditions for a collapse that will devour those short-term gains.

Because what is accumulating in the background of each of those winning positions is the cascade: 8 mbpd of daily scarcity compounding into a fertiliser shock, a food security crisis across 15 to 20 vulnerable economies, a financial contagion running through sovereign debt and emerging market currencies, a desalination doctrine that threatens the civilisational baseline of the Arabian Peninsula, and a wave of political turmoil that will arrive on a 6 to 12-month lag and cannot be recalled once it begins. No actor wins in that world. Not even the actors who think they are winning now.

. . .

And [then] the question shifts from how to prevent the rupture to what can be reconstructed from the wreckage of a global system that three great powers allowed to break because none of them was willing to accept that their short-term winning position was being purchased at the cost of the system that makes winning meaningful.

There's much more at the link.

That's food for thought all right . . . possibly food for nightmares, if no progress is made.  The problem is, it's almost impossible to find anyone in Iran with whom to negotiate meaningfully.  Iran's fundamentalist Twelver leaders are more than willing to bring down the entire world with them, if they have to.  Some of them even believe that if they do, the Twelfth Imam will return - literally, be forced to return - to rule the nations and impose Shi'ite Islam upon them.  They are not acting logically or rationally, but theologically and ideologically.  We cannot find common ground with such people for a solution.  That's the fly in the above article's ointment.  I can see the author's opinions, and even agree with many of them - but if there is no rational discussion possible, how can her gloomy predictions be avoided?

If you know the answer to that conundrum, you're probably a better person than I . . . not to mention all the politicians and leaders on all sides that kicked the Iran can down the road until there was nowhere left for it to go!

Peter