While arguments ensue over how big a military we need, how much money we're wasting on aircraft, etc. etc. it's occasionally useful to remember it's not all about us. There are other players out there, and like it or not some of them have agendas that differ from ours. It's a little hard to ignore that Vladimir Putin for one is a big fan of the former Soviet Union... and he's lately started to project the message that Russia "is back".
The BBC reports that Russian aircraft are starting to engage in the old Cold War sport of probing defenses to see what happens.
A Nato statement on Wednesday said that in the past 48 hours Nato jets had intercepted eight Russian military aircraft over the North Sea/Atlantic Ocean, as well as four over the Black Sea and more than 10 in the Baltic region.
In all the incidents the Russian planes flew in international airspace. Nato says it tracked them "in order to identify the aircraft and protect Allied airspace".
But in many cases the planes did not file flight plans, nor did they use on-board transponders or maintain radio contact with civilian air traffic control, Nato said.
Such behaviour created a risk for civilian aviation, Nato said.
Needless to say, this has NATO on alert and European nations, especially those who were on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, are concerned. This follows
Sweden's hunt for an intruding sub in its waters that proved futile - but left Sweden deciding it needs to upgrade its military capabilities.
The Swedish ASW force that left port to hunt for the suspected submarine was in some ways more capable (including the stealth corvette HMS Visby), but considerably smaller than the force Sweden put to sea in the 1980s.
Since the Cold War, Sweden’s surface fleet has shrunk from 34 combatants to only nine and from 12 attack submarines to only five. To boot, Sweden scrapped its ASW helicopters a few years ago, and the replacement platform is not due to enter service until 2018 at the earliest.
While Swedish warships and submarines are all high quality, the navy has now reached a point where quite arguably quantity has become a quality in its own right, and the small numbers hamper the navy’s ability sustain operations for any longer period of time, or the ability to surge presence in a given area.
Meanwhile,
the eastern Asian region is experiencing some anxiety ahead of a four month period when there will be no U.S. carrier groups operating in the region due to budget constraints and demands elsewhere.
A typical aircraft carrier can accommodate more than 50 fighter jets and about 15 helicopters. Carriers can quickly arrive at a trouble spot and provide air combat power. They are, essentially, mobile air bases that can be used to secure air supremacy.
The U.S. Navy routinely deploys carriers to regions such as East Asia and the Persian Gulf to put pressure on countries such as China, North Korea and Iran.
China is building a fleet of aircraft carriers to enhance its naval air defense capability in South China Sea.
The U.S. has 10 carriers in service. However, its military campaign against the Islamic State launched in August is putting additional strains on its fleet. The U.S. used to deploy two carriers to the Middle East, but reduced the number to one in around 2013 due to fiscal restraints. Some policymakers within the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, want a return to the two-carrier operation as the battle against Islamic State fighters continues.
I wonder if there are certain parties out there looking at the war on government being waged in Washington by the right wing, and the prospect of a U.S. government that will be totally paralyzed for the next two years. I wonder if they're thinking this might open up some opportunities for them. I wonder if the right wing realizes what they're doing. Looks like those swords aren't going to be recycled into plowshares just yet, not while sabers are getting rattled... (See update below the
Orange Omnilepticon.)
UPDATE:
Going by the gist of most of the comments, the reaction to this post mostly seems to be "Whatever." I wrote it up (I'll admit) rather quickly, as I thought it was news that's not getting a lot of attention. Considering that the U.S. is consumed by the midterm elections, panics over Ebola, and the rest of the world is concerned about Ebola as well and the continuing economic troubles in Europe... Well, it's easy to see how stories like this can fall through the cracks.
But, one of the reasons I put this out via the Kossack Air Force is because airpower is, like it or not, one of those things countries like to wave around to show the flag, send a message, read my lips kind of thing. It's a demonstration of capabilities. I doubt we're headed back to the kind of massed arsenals we used to have pointed at each other during the cold war - but that doesn't mean we can ignore what's still out there or what might be done with it.
If Putin has decided sending Russian aircraft out to probe European military responses is a good idea at this time, perhaps we should think about the larger context. Military adventures in Crimea and the Ukraine already had NATO on alert; it was and is pretty blatant aggression. This may be posturing, but that can lead to unintended consequences - as per the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner.
The BBC report on Russian aircraft in the Baltics, out into the Atlantic and the Black Sea has more to it than can be gotten from the small excerpt above. The way it's being done and why is worth examining:
According to Mr Sutyagin [of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)], such flights close to Nato borders are "nothing new" but their current intensity and the lack of communication "should be taken in the context of Russian policy - aiming at confrontation with the West, not co-operation".
The Baltic is also a busy area for international flights, he noted, so the pilots' failure to communicate there could be seen as "irresponsible".
Nato has stepped up its air patrols over the Baltic states - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - in response to the Ukraine crisis.
The Kremlin regards the states' incorporation into Nato in 2004 as an unfriendly act, as they used to be part of the Soviet Union and about a million ethnic Russians still live there.
emphasis added
Putin has plenty of problems at home. He'd already cranked up nationalism and jingoism within Russia to bolster his own political standing, and is under even more pressure now due to sanctions over the Ukraine and the drop in world oil prices that has had a big impact on the Russian economy. And while it's easy to dismiss Swedish nerves over alleged submarines, as JayFarquharson does, Sweden finds itself facing a more belligerent Russia after scaling back its own defenses and suffering a self-inflicted hit to its own economy. Combine that with the continuing Eurozone crisis, and a calm, reasoned approach to addressing everyone's issues is a lot less likely to prevail. Throw military posturing into the mix, and the potential for unintended consequences spiraling out of control is not decreasing.
Meanwhile, in Asia the absence of a U.S. carrier group and the ability of its aircraft to project military force is causing countries that have relied on the U.S. for an umbrella to rethink that policy with an eye to the 'weather' in the region. As the Nikkei article concluded:
The four-month absence could prompt Japan to start developing its own fleet of aircraft carriers.
Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force already has two helicopter carriers, Hyuga and Ise. The larger Izumo is due to be finished soon.
If fighting broke out between Japan and China in the waters around the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, Air Self-Defense Force fighters would have to be deployed from bases in Okinawa or Kyushu. Flights from these bases would use a large amount of fuel. A Japanese fleet of carriers could get fighters to the islands, known as Diaoyu in Chinese.
From the end of World War II through the Cold War, U.S. policy was to keep Japan dependent on its military power. But the fiscal squeeze and frequent conflicts around the world has led to a shift in policy. Washington is now asking its allies to be able to deal with situations close to them.
Australia is building a fleet of carriers as it seeks to bolster its defense capabilities.
emphasis added
While the U.S. has largely been preoccupied with the Middle East, tensions have been rising in the South China Sea as China seeks to claim large parts of it - and is building up a Navy capable of doing something about it. It's why Australia is considering its own seaborne air forces and ships to carry them. Australia is buying F-35A versions; the F-35B would be capable of operating off the ships Australia is in the process of building. There have been suggestions Australia should add the B model to the inventory - events may make those arguments more likely to prevail.
As it happens, breaking news is that Britain has decided it will go ahead with plans to build and put into service a second new aircraft carrier. Defence cuts had called for the second to be mothballed, but the tensions now being experienced by NATO have reordered priorities. It appears aircraft carriers are trending.
China's rise as an economic power in recent years has supported its push into increasing its military capabilities. World economic and energy uncertainties, demands of a population looking for an improved standard of living, are forces driving this, as are nationalism, history, and culture. To dismiss the implications of this would perhaps not be entirely prudent. (Consider China's efforts to lock up African natural resources, for example.)
The upshot of all this is that airpower is not a luxury to be casually discarded in the world the way things are shaping up. For all the talk of asymmetric warfare and boots on the ground, it appears there's still a case for airpower to project military force - and act as a deterrent to military adventurism. For whatever reason, the world seems to be entering a period where major powers are in collision again. While the forces of global trade would seem to militate against resorting to war, the ongoing failures in economies around the world in recent years may make military actions seem more attractive as an alternative. Certainly the U.S. has not hesitated to use the threat of military force to obtain what it wants where that leverage can be applied.
As long as the U.S. had the 'biggest stick' to wave around, applying that leverage was relatively easy - one reason why the U.S. has gotten into the Empire business. Nasty as that has proved to be, there's still the fact that U.S. military dominance has at least provided a certain kind of order in the world, if only because of how it has deterred certain kinds of action by others.
The current dysfunction in the U.S. government is taking a toll on that, however. It's making it very difficult for long-term planning and resource allocation as short-term thinking ignores long term consequences. For example, much has been made of the Air Force drive to ground the A-10 fleet, with charges that the aircraft is hated by the brass. Aside from whatever truth there may be to that assertion, there's also the fact that the sequester and budget constraints in general are forcing tough choices. The A-10 fleet is aging; the Air Force fleet overall is aging. New aircraft are needed, what with airframes falling apart and new technologies not easily added to old aircraft. Consider this example of the trade offs.
...USAF needs 1,100 F-35 maintainers in place to declare IOC [initial operational capability], and 800 of them were to be “experienced” crew chiefs and backshop people brought over from the A-10 community, Bogdan explained. If Congress won’t allow the A-10’s retirement, the Air Force will not only have to come up with an extra 800 people somewhere to send to the F-35, but the number of experienced maintainers available will be smaller. It takes “a lot longer” to train a brand-new maintainer to be a 5-7-level tech than the “tech sergeants, master sergeants, and senior master sergeants who sign off” on the jet’s paperwork before it can fly, Bogdan said.
That's just one example of many; keep in mind that while it's necessary to respond to the press of immediate events, the long-term, big picture can't be ignored. The military is one of the few institutions left in government that's trying to do long-term planning. The ideologues who seem to feel market forces can solve every problem, and failing that, bombing the heck out of them is the answer, and who can't think past the next election cycle are the real problem.
The turn to military solutions in response to events is not encouraging, but understandable. Brute force is a tempting tool even in the best of times - and these are not the best of times. A new urgency is being added to the mix by several increasingly significant problems. One is the inevitable consequence of human population growth. Recent work, here and here, suggests there are going to be severe consequences from world population growth that will have no easy answers. And that is on top of the growing Climate Crisis.
At a time when the world really needs to address problems cooperatively on a global basis, trends seem to be moving in the opposite direction. (Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold) Ideally, we should all be putting resources into addressing those problems instead of building up military machines - but humans are not rational. To the extent that maintaining our airpower can contribute to keeping at least some kind of order in the world and deterring open conflict, hopefully it can buy enough time for sanity to break out.
There's an old saying attributed to Winston Churchill: "You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing - once they have exhausted the alternatives." It would be nice if we could get around to "the right thing" globally - before we run out of alternatives.