I have recently written here regarding the discussion of some hypothetical scenarios regarding U.S. military action against Iran. As appeared to be the case at first glance, and still more at second glance, Iran's size and population, its fragmented geography, its high level of urbanization and the distribution of its urban centers, and the lack of convenient entry points, as well as its relative demographic cohesion, make any attempt at invasion or occupation of the whole country a task difficult in the best of circumstances, and implausible on account of the sheer scale of the force required for it. (Instead of the hundred thousand troops who occupied Iraq, or the two or three hundred thousand who might be available in the event of a full mobilization of the reserves and National Guard, two or three million would be required--figures implausible outside a world war-like draft.)
That reality leaves the air and sea options. It would be relatively easy for the U.S. to neutralize Iran's air force and navy, while its ballistic missile forces appear to be of quite limited practical offensive capacity. At the same time its less conventional anti-ship capabilities, and its anti-air capabilities, if possibly more formidable than those of other recent U.S. opponents (especially if there proves to be some truth to the larger claims made for its indigenous systems), seem unlikely to make a prolonged U.S. air campaign and blockade against the country infeasible (even if they may take a toll heavier than the very light ones of past air campaigns). The U.S. could quite easily cut off Iran's trade, and inflict heavy damage on its armed forces and its economy.
Still, all these years later, there remains no substitute for ground forces in achieving regime changes through military means--while the prospect for blowback is considerable, and not solely through the most obvious sympathizers Iran has. A prolonged campaign of this kind will test the tolerance of the international community broadly, and not least, the patience of neighboring Russia, whose non-intervention cannot be counted on. The result is that the seemingly "easy" air-sea option is not so easy after all. It just about never is.
Monday, July 22, 2019
Monday, July 15, 2019
Funding the Sixth-Generation Fighter?
Some years ago I took up the subject of the sixth-generation fighter aircraft.
I discussed what features are thought likely to distinguish such an aircraft. (Think artificially intelligent, hypersonic, armed with directed-energy weapons.) I also considered whether these as yet hypothetical planes might or might not actually appear within the predicted time frame--the late 2020s or 2030s.
I offered three reasons to be skeptical of this.
1. The turn from great power conflict to small wars, making quite different demands.
2. The rate of technical progress may be too slow to allow for the kind of aircraft imagined in that time frame (perhaps in itself, perhaps relative to other, more dynamic fields).
3. Economic stagnation may leave air forces unable to afford such aircraft.
It would be difficult to deny that great power conflict has resurged since I first wrote that piece (in 2010).
There is also more bullishness about technical development now than then. How many of the really relevant technologies will emerge remains open to question. Even where artificial intelligence is concerned expectations now seem more moderate as compared with a couple of years ago--while as the research into hypersonic weaponry shows, anything like a truly viable, multirole, production aircraft capable of hypersonic flight remains quite some way. I would not bet on such aircraft being anywhere near ready for service in the 2020s. Still, it seems to me precipitous to wholly rule out at least the technical possibility of such aircraft for a full generation.
However, the third reason, the matter of cost, seems at least as significant as ever.
Consider what came of the fifth generation of fighter. The Europeans decided not to bother, making do with the "generation 4.5" Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafale. The Japanese, Russians, Chinese only belatedly pursued programs. And even the U.S. Air Force, initially intent on 750 F-22s, cut back its order by three-quarters, making do with a mere 187 operational jets.
One can attribute much of this to the end of the Cold War, admittedly. The Russians and Chinese did not have the resources--the former because of economic collapse, the latter because if fast-growing, they were still relatively cash-strapped, and (wisely) prioritizing economic development. This let the U.S. and its allies take it easy there, the more so as they had other priorities in an age of sluggish growth and intensifying economic competition, and in which, at any rate, small wars seemed the principal concern.
Still, as noted earlier, if the Russians and Chinese only belatedly fielded their own systems, they did so all the same, and in an international scene that had grown much more aggressive in comparison with the 1990s. However, after developing the Sukhoi-57 the Russian government decided to hold off on actual production. This may seem understandable given Russia's attempting here to fund superpower capacities (cutting-edge aircraft production) on rather less than superpower resources (even in PPP terms, its GDP is about 20 percent that of the U.S., the European Union or China). Still, in the face of what American policymakers regarded as a more aggressive scene, the Pentagon has opted to buy brand new F-15s (upgraded, but still F-15s, and not even stealthy "Silent Eagles" either) to fill out its ranks. There has been much argument over the rationale, with many downplaying the question of cost savings--perhaps, too much so, in light of the uncertainty involved in the eventual cost of the more advanced F-35, and for that matter, the fate of the program more generally. (Production has only scarcely begun, a mere four hundred of those thousands of intended units rolled off the line to date, while criticism of the high cost and questionable performance of the aircraft continue.)
In short, even the fifth generation of jets has proven prohibitively costly. It seems a certainty that, if they do prove technically feasible, a sixth generation of fighters will be much more costly than these--the billion dollar fighter upon us if the trend holds--without necessarily offering value for the money (other systems might prove a more efficient way of doing whatever job is at hand), or the resources being there even if they do. (Our economies have been a stagnant for a decade now, and could easily remain so, while one does not have to incline to the more apocalyptic visions of climate change to see that worse may be in store here.)
Indeed, thinking of the talk of sixth generation fighters I am reminded of other high-tech roads not traveled, like the '50s-era visions of ultra-fast, ultra-high-flying, ultra-long-range shooting superjets (YF-12, F-108) that should ring very familiar to anyone who has actually considered the things a sixth generation fighter is supposed to do (be a hypersonic, near-space jet with longer-ranged missiles and even "frigging laser beams"). Instead fighter design traveled a more conventional, less spectacular, but arguably more practical course. So does it seem likely to do again.
I discussed what features are thought likely to distinguish such an aircraft. (Think artificially intelligent, hypersonic, armed with directed-energy weapons.) I also considered whether these as yet hypothetical planes might or might not actually appear within the predicted time frame--the late 2020s or 2030s.
I offered three reasons to be skeptical of this.
1. The turn from great power conflict to small wars, making quite different demands.
2. The rate of technical progress may be too slow to allow for the kind of aircraft imagined in that time frame (perhaps in itself, perhaps relative to other, more dynamic fields).
3. Economic stagnation may leave air forces unable to afford such aircraft.
It would be difficult to deny that great power conflict has resurged since I first wrote that piece (in 2010).
There is also more bullishness about technical development now than then. How many of the really relevant technologies will emerge remains open to question. Even where artificial intelligence is concerned expectations now seem more moderate as compared with a couple of years ago--while as the research into hypersonic weaponry shows, anything like a truly viable, multirole, production aircraft capable of hypersonic flight remains quite some way. I would not bet on such aircraft being anywhere near ready for service in the 2020s. Still, it seems to me precipitous to wholly rule out at least the technical possibility of such aircraft for a full generation.
However, the third reason, the matter of cost, seems at least as significant as ever.
Consider what came of the fifth generation of fighter. The Europeans decided not to bother, making do with the "generation 4.5" Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafale. The Japanese, Russians, Chinese only belatedly pursued programs. And even the U.S. Air Force, initially intent on 750 F-22s, cut back its order by three-quarters, making do with a mere 187 operational jets.
One can attribute much of this to the end of the Cold War, admittedly. The Russians and Chinese did not have the resources--the former because of economic collapse, the latter because if fast-growing, they were still relatively cash-strapped, and (wisely) prioritizing economic development. This let the U.S. and its allies take it easy there, the more so as they had other priorities in an age of sluggish growth and intensifying economic competition, and in which, at any rate, small wars seemed the principal concern.
Still, as noted earlier, if the Russians and Chinese only belatedly fielded their own systems, they did so all the same, and in an international scene that had grown much more aggressive in comparison with the 1990s. However, after developing the Sukhoi-57 the Russian government decided to hold off on actual production. This may seem understandable given Russia's attempting here to fund superpower capacities (cutting-edge aircraft production) on rather less than superpower resources (even in PPP terms, its GDP is about 20 percent that of the U.S., the European Union or China). Still, in the face of what American policymakers regarded as a more aggressive scene, the Pentagon has opted to buy brand new F-15s (upgraded, but still F-15s, and not even stealthy "Silent Eagles" either) to fill out its ranks. There has been much argument over the rationale, with many downplaying the question of cost savings--perhaps, too much so, in light of the uncertainty involved in the eventual cost of the more advanced F-35, and for that matter, the fate of the program more generally. (Production has only scarcely begun, a mere four hundred of those thousands of intended units rolled off the line to date, while criticism of the high cost and questionable performance of the aircraft continue.)
In short, even the fifth generation of jets has proven prohibitively costly. It seems a certainty that, if they do prove technically feasible, a sixth generation of fighters will be much more costly than these--the billion dollar fighter upon us if the trend holds--without necessarily offering value for the money (other systems might prove a more efficient way of doing whatever job is at hand), or the resources being there even if they do. (Our economies have been a stagnant for a decade now, and could easily remain so, while one does not have to incline to the more apocalyptic visions of climate change to see that worse may be in store here.)
Indeed, thinking of the talk of sixth generation fighters I am reminded of other high-tech roads not traveled, like the '50s-era visions of ultra-fast, ultra-high-flying, ultra-long-range shooting superjets (YF-12, F-108) that should ring very familiar to anyone who has actually considered the things a sixth generation fighter is supposed to do (be a hypersonic, near-space jet with longer-ranged missiles and even "frigging laser beams"). Instead fighter design traveled a more conventional, less spectacular, but arguably more practical course. So does it seem likely to do again.
Friday, July 12, 2019
A Return to the Draft? Crunching the Numbers
I recently considered the discussion of what would be required in the way of military manpower for a U.S. occupation of Iran, which suggested a force of 2-3 million personnel--and in order to generate that, U.S. forces at manning levels not seen since World War II (10 million, 12 million).
Given that even a full mobilization of the Reserves and National Guard would generate just a fraction of that, the conclusion of many analysts of the subject has been that a draft would be required.
Still, there are many ways of handling conscription--not least, in regard to the proportion of the population subject to it.
It may seem that, given population growth since the 1940s--more than doubling the size of the U.S. population--it should not be quite so difficult to come up with the numbers discussed here.
However, due to the lengthening life expectancy and lower birth rates characteristic of a modern, urbanized society, it is also an older population on average.
In 1940 the median age in the U.S. was 29.
Today it is 38.
In 1940 the 15-24 age group made up about 18 percent of the population.
In 2018 it was down to under 12 percent--a far from insignificant drop.1
This naturally shows in the size of the 18-24 cohort that would be eligible for the draft, some 31 million as of 2010, with the figure unlikely to have grown very much (and, it is not impossible, has shrunk a little).
At first glance 30 million or so potential draftees may seem like quite an ample pool for the kind of expansion discussed here--a mere fraction of it sufficing to fill out the ranks to the desired degree. However, it is never the case that the entirety of any group is actually up to the rigors of military service. According to recent reports a significant majority of those in this cohort (71 percent) do not meet the armed forces' current health, physical fitness, educational and other standards.
Twenty-nine percent of that figure comes to somewhere around 10 million.
The result is that, if seriously aimed at generating a World War II level force, a draft directed at this age bracket would have to take virtually every acceptable male and female into the armed forces, questions of deferments for education or other special circumstances wholly dispensed with; reduce its standards at the price of its efficiency, perhaps significantly; or cast its net more widely, drafting from among older Americans as well.
That such possibilities would even have to be talked about makes clear just how drastic such a course would be, such that even the most overheated neocon imagination cannot picture its being remotely acceptable to what even conservative commentators acknowledge is a war-weary American public.
Given that even a full mobilization of the Reserves and National Guard would generate just a fraction of that, the conclusion of many analysts of the subject has been that a draft would be required.
Still, there are many ways of handling conscription--not least, in regard to the proportion of the population subject to it.
It may seem that, given population growth since the 1940s--more than doubling the size of the U.S. population--it should not be quite so difficult to come up with the numbers discussed here.
However, due to the lengthening life expectancy and lower birth rates characteristic of a modern, urbanized society, it is also an older population on average.
In 1940 the median age in the U.S. was 29.
Today it is 38.
In 1940 the 15-24 age group made up about 18 percent of the population.
In 2018 it was down to under 12 percent--a far from insignificant drop.1
This naturally shows in the size of the 18-24 cohort that would be eligible for the draft, some 31 million as of 2010, with the figure unlikely to have grown very much (and, it is not impossible, has shrunk a little).
At first glance 30 million or so potential draftees may seem like quite an ample pool for the kind of expansion discussed here--a mere fraction of it sufficing to fill out the ranks to the desired degree. However, it is never the case that the entirety of any group is actually up to the rigors of military service. According to recent reports a significant majority of those in this cohort (71 percent) do not meet the armed forces' current health, physical fitness, educational and other standards.
Twenty-nine percent of that figure comes to somewhere around 10 million.
The result is that, if seriously aimed at generating a World War II level force, a draft directed at this age bracket would have to take virtually every acceptable male and female into the armed forces, questions of deferments for education or other special circumstances wholly dispensed with; reduce its standards at the price of its efficiency, perhaps significantly; or cast its net more widely, drafting from among older Americans as well.
That such possibilities would even have to be talked about makes clear just how drastic such a course would be, such that even the most overheated neocon imagination cannot picture its being remotely acceptable to what even conservative commentators acknowledge is a war-weary American public.
An Occupation of Iran? A Second Look at the Numbers--and Much Else
In the discussion of the various estimates some observers have made of just what a territorial occupation of Iran would involve, I have seen some object that attempting to base one on an analogy between Iran and 2003 Iraq, for example, is a crude method--implying that these may overestimate the troop requirements.
The objection can run that Iran is not evenly peopled. Much of the nation is uninhabitable--a quarter of it nearly uninhabited salt flat and desert in the center. The twenty-one provinces to the west of this desert-dominated center, comprising less than half the country by area, contain about five-sixths of the population; while Tehran province, and four of its adjoining provinces (Qom, Mazandaran, Alborz, Markazi), a little under six percent of the territory, contain almost thirty percent of the population.
This may seem to make the task easier by suggesting less territory actually has to be covered. However, Iran--a country, again, comparable to Western Europe in size--is vast enough that even occupying a portion of it would be a daunting task. The densely peopled Tehran-centered area discussed above is by itself still markedly greater in extent and population than the U.S. occupation zone in post-war Germany.1 And the bigger western region discussed here is, in territorial extent, about three times bigger than the whole of West Germany then. (It is also twice the size of the portion of Iraq not consisting of uninhabited desert.2)
The result is that this area alone would still be enough to plausibly require millions of soldiers.3 And the fact remains that the rest of the country could not be ignored given the significant populations further east, not least the nation's second-largest city, Mashhad, near the border with Turkmenistan. The physical fragmentation of this vast territory by the large uninhabitable space in the middle, and its multiple mountain chains (in which Iran resembles Italy more than Germany, yet another complicating factor), is likely to pose particular challenges for a force coming in from the outside with heavy mechanized units, and attempting to use troops efficiently through a rapid-reaction plan rather than a wide scattering of garrisons. (It also does not help that the densest and strategically most significant population cluster, the aforementioned one centering on Tehran, is deep within the country's interior, hundreds of miles inland from the Iraqi border, or the Persian Gulf.)
Still, for all the challenges posed by the country's large and mountainous territory, perhaps the most significant of all is the intensive urbanization at which this population distribution hints--already noted, but perhaps worth underlining here. Over half of the Iranian population lives in the country's nearly one hundred cities of 100,000 people or more; a quarter in just the eight cities home to a million or more. The capital Tehran has a population of 9 million, and 15 million in the metro area--nearly a fifth of the nation. No army has ever attempted a military occupation of an urban area this size. (Baghdad at the time of the invasion, for example, had a population just half the size of Tehran's--and on top of this Iran has two additional 2003 Baghdad equivalents, the Mashhad and Isfahan areas with 3-4 million each.)
All of this reinforces rather than debunks the argument that a force a multiple of what it would have taken to control Iraq, or which it did take to control America's portion of post-war Germany or Japan, would be required for an occupation of larger, more urbanized Iran--even before one thinks of the political complexities of the situation nationally and regionally, about which it might be appropriate to say another word.
Perhaps the most obvious matter is that Iran is considerably less subject to the kinds of ethno-religious divisions that Iraq was. This may seem an advantage given their contribution to the considerable bloodshed that followed regime change in that country. However, it made some aspects of that regime change easier. Certainly there is nothing comparable to the semi-detachment of Kurdistan from the rest of Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion, and the U.S. alliance with Kurdish forces there; or the conflict between Shiites in the south and the Sunni center, which did not translate to such easy cooperation as in the case of the Kurds, but which meant a less united opposition to the post-Saddam regime. Indeed, where in Iraq an ethno-religious minority (Sunni Arabs) was in control, in Iran the majority ethnic group (Persians, over half the country) is politically dominant, while the country is relatively homogeneous in religion (ninety percent Shiite).
There is, too, the situation outside the country's borders. As I noted previously, local opposition in the wake of a successful invasion could find support among populations in neighboring states like Iraq--which might provide refuge and much else. (As the situation stands now Iran is affiliated with militias in many a neighboring country. Can it be imagined that they would totally stay out of such a fight?) Potentially more significant, however, there is the question of Russia, too little acknowledged in discussions of such a scenario. Given Iran's sharing the shores of the Caspian Sea, and borders with Russian-aligned Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, it is very easy to imagine such a conflict becoming--like the wars in Georgia, the Donbass, and Syria--a proxy war between Russia and the U.S.. All of this would not only make any post-occupation conflict more difficult, but contribute to the continued worsening of U.S.-Russian relations, and the danger of their military confrontation escalating.
Still, what may be more significant than all this is, of course, the point that David Edelstein has made in regard to territorial occupations. Critics of occupations like that of Iraq in 2003 are not wrong to point to the lack of local knowledge, planning and inadequate resourcing of the occupying force that so quickly turned the situation disastrous (unreadable as anything but the extreme wishful thinking and extreme incompetence of the neocons and their fellow travelers) but (as Machiavelli pointed out in The Prince a half millennium before Edelstein took up the subject) the task of changing regimes is about as difficult as a political job gets. It is worse when the one changing the regime is an outsider who blew up a lot of stuff and killed a lot of people to get there, and has to do unpleasant things to stay where people did not want them to begin with.
Unsurprisingly, as Edelstein showed empirically in his two-century survey of territorial occupations in his 2004 article on the subject in International Security (same issue this appeared in, by the way) occupations--measured by the standard of whether they not merely keep violence to an acceptable minimum during their stay, but whether they achieve their political goals in more enduring fashion--usually fail, even when not being overseen by the likes of a Donald Rumsfeld and company. Indeed, just about the only thing that can make them work out (and this, Machiavelli did not anticipate) is if occupier and occupied are drawn together by a mutual fear of a third party greater than any hostility they have to each other.
This is pretty much unimaginable where Iran today is concerned. And no one who presumes to discuss the issue should forget it.
1. The U.S. had 1.6 million troops in Germany on V-E Day, over 300,000 in its zone a year later, while some four hundred thousand Western troops covered West Germany as a whole. Apportioning that to the areas discussed here, some half million would be needed for the densely peopled five-province west-central area alone, 1.2 million troops for the western part of the country.
2. Properly manning the occupation of Iraq in 2003 would, according to one estimate made at the time, have required 800,000 troops. Doubling that translates to 1.6 million troops for western Iran.
3. See notes 1 and 2.
The objection can run that Iran is not evenly peopled. Much of the nation is uninhabitable--a quarter of it nearly uninhabited salt flat and desert in the center. The twenty-one provinces to the west of this desert-dominated center, comprising less than half the country by area, contain about five-sixths of the population; while Tehran province, and four of its adjoining provinces (Qom, Mazandaran, Alborz, Markazi), a little under six percent of the territory, contain almost thirty percent of the population.
This may seem to make the task easier by suggesting less territory actually has to be covered. However, Iran--a country, again, comparable to Western Europe in size--is vast enough that even occupying a portion of it would be a daunting task. The densely peopled Tehran-centered area discussed above is by itself still markedly greater in extent and population than the U.S. occupation zone in post-war Germany.1 And the bigger western region discussed here is, in territorial extent, about three times bigger than the whole of West Germany then. (It is also twice the size of the portion of Iraq not consisting of uninhabited desert.2)
The result is that this area alone would still be enough to plausibly require millions of soldiers.3 And the fact remains that the rest of the country could not be ignored given the significant populations further east, not least the nation's second-largest city, Mashhad, near the border with Turkmenistan. The physical fragmentation of this vast territory by the large uninhabitable space in the middle, and its multiple mountain chains (in which Iran resembles Italy more than Germany, yet another complicating factor), is likely to pose particular challenges for a force coming in from the outside with heavy mechanized units, and attempting to use troops efficiently through a rapid-reaction plan rather than a wide scattering of garrisons. (It also does not help that the densest and strategically most significant population cluster, the aforementioned one centering on Tehran, is deep within the country's interior, hundreds of miles inland from the Iraqi border, or the Persian Gulf.)
Still, for all the challenges posed by the country's large and mountainous territory, perhaps the most significant of all is the intensive urbanization at which this population distribution hints--already noted, but perhaps worth underlining here. Over half of the Iranian population lives in the country's nearly one hundred cities of 100,000 people or more; a quarter in just the eight cities home to a million or more. The capital Tehran has a population of 9 million, and 15 million in the metro area--nearly a fifth of the nation. No army has ever attempted a military occupation of an urban area this size. (Baghdad at the time of the invasion, for example, had a population just half the size of Tehran's--and on top of this Iran has two additional 2003 Baghdad equivalents, the Mashhad and Isfahan areas with 3-4 million each.)
All of this reinforces rather than debunks the argument that a force a multiple of what it would have taken to control Iraq, or which it did take to control America's portion of post-war Germany or Japan, would be required for an occupation of larger, more urbanized Iran--even before one thinks of the political complexities of the situation nationally and regionally, about which it might be appropriate to say another word.
Perhaps the most obvious matter is that Iran is considerably less subject to the kinds of ethno-religious divisions that Iraq was. This may seem an advantage given their contribution to the considerable bloodshed that followed regime change in that country. However, it made some aspects of that regime change easier. Certainly there is nothing comparable to the semi-detachment of Kurdistan from the rest of Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion, and the U.S. alliance with Kurdish forces there; or the conflict between Shiites in the south and the Sunni center, which did not translate to such easy cooperation as in the case of the Kurds, but which meant a less united opposition to the post-Saddam regime. Indeed, where in Iraq an ethno-religious minority (Sunni Arabs) was in control, in Iran the majority ethnic group (Persians, over half the country) is politically dominant, while the country is relatively homogeneous in religion (ninety percent Shiite).
There is, too, the situation outside the country's borders. As I noted previously, local opposition in the wake of a successful invasion could find support among populations in neighboring states like Iraq--which might provide refuge and much else. (As the situation stands now Iran is affiliated with militias in many a neighboring country. Can it be imagined that they would totally stay out of such a fight?) Potentially more significant, however, there is the question of Russia, too little acknowledged in discussions of such a scenario. Given Iran's sharing the shores of the Caspian Sea, and borders with Russian-aligned Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, it is very easy to imagine such a conflict becoming--like the wars in Georgia, the Donbass, and Syria--a proxy war between Russia and the U.S.. All of this would not only make any post-occupation conflict more difficult, but contribute to the continued worsening of U.S.-Russian relations, and the danger of their military confrontation escalating.
Still, what may be more significant than all this is, of course, the point that David Edelstein has made in regard to territorial occupations. Critics of occupations like that of Iraq in 2003 are not wrong to point to the lack of local knowledge, planning and inadequate resourcing of the occupying force that so quickly turned the situation disastrous (unreadable as anything but the extreme wishful thinking and extreme incompetence of the neocons and their fellow travelers) but (as Machiavelli pointed out in The Prince a half millennium before Edelstein took up the subject) the task of changing regimes is about as difficult as a political job gets. It is worse when the one changing the regime is an outsider who blew up a lot of stuff and killed a lot of people to get there, and has to do unpleasant things to stay where people did not want them to begin with.
Unsurprisingly, as Edelstein showed empirically in his two-century survey of territorial occupations in his 2004 article on the subject in International Security (same issue this appeared in, by the way) occupations--measured by the standard of whether they not merely keep violence to an acceptable minimum during their stay, but whether they achieve their political goals in more enduring fashion--usually fail, even when not being overseen by the likes of a Donald Rumsfeld and company. Indeed, just about the only thing that can make them work out (and this, Machiavelli did not anticipate) is if occupier and occupied are drawn together by a mutual fear of a third party greater than any hostility they have to each other.
This is pretty much unimaginable where Iran today is concerned. And no one who presumes to discuss the issue should forget it.
1. The U.S. had 1.6 million troops in Germany on V-E Day, over 300,000 in its zone a year later, while some four hundred thousand Western troops covered West Germany as a whole. Apportioning that to the areas discussed here, some half million would be needed for the densely peopled five-province west-central area alone, 1.2 million troops for the western part of the country.
2. Properly manning the occupation of Iraq in 2003 would, according to one estimate made at the time, have required 800,000 troops. Doubling that translates to 1.6 million troops for western Iran.
3. See notes 1 and 2.
Tuesday, July 9, 2019
Space Age Super-Fighters
In the half century or so after the Wright Brothers' first flight the performance of aircraft with regard to speed and altitude advanced exponentially. At the start of World War I, a scarce decade after that first flight, planes could fly as fast as seventy-five miles an hour and reach altitudes of twenty thousand feet. By the end of the war four years later those figures had doubled, and they doubled again during the interwar period, while World War II accelerated the advance once more. The conflict saw prop fighters doing four hundred, close to five hundred, miles an hour, and the first jets flying into action even faster than that. In another decade, the top speed of those jets was mere cruising speed for the fighters becoming standard in air force inventories, which could do Mach 2 or better on afterburner--while even passenger travel looked set to go supersonic (with Britain and France collaborating on the Concorde).
It seemed natural that planes would continue to become faster and higher-flying--the more so for the even more dramatic progress in the field of rocketry. The World War II-era V-2s led to rockets that could reach escape speed (twenty-five thousand miles per hour) to leave the atmosphere entirely in the same time frame, putting into orbit unmanned satellites, cosmonauts, and beyond that, who knew? Meanwhile, those rockets' smaller cousins revolutionized the field of air defense--surface-to-air missiles meaning in the view of many that planes would have to become faster and higher-flying to escape them. Scarcely after their production run had begun the B-52 Stratofortress no longer appeared stratospheric enough in the eyes of U.S. Air Force planners, the coming years apparently demanding planes that could fly at Mach 3 at 70,000 feet or higher--and in turn, interceptor aircraft that could match that performance, for when Soviet bombers became equally capable. Thus the B-70 Valkyrie, and the F-12 and F-108 fighters.
Of course, none of these projects amounted to all that much, and nothing comparable was ever set up in their place. Instead of the B-70, canceled after the expenditure of over ten billion dollars in today's terms (which works out to about five billion per prototype), what the Air Force got was the modestly supersonic B-1, and the subsonic B-2, the emphasis placed on sneaking under radar, and then hiding from it in plain sight with the help of stealthy shaping and material, rather than somehow trying to get beyond its reach.
The F-108 never even made it to the prototype stage, while the spectacularly expensive F-12 (for the cost of one of which the Air Force could purchase a half dozen Phantoms) was also cancelled. Only the latter had much of a legacy, in the form of a small fleet of spy planes based on its airframe, the SR-71 (32 jets total), while the fighters of the third, fourth, fifth generations were pretty much the same as those of the '50s-era second generation with regard to speed and altitude.
This was even the case with those planes' intended missile, the AIM-47. It did pave the way for the AIM-54 Phoenix, but that, too, appears underwhelming in hindsight. Because the TFX fighter program supposed to use it also came to naught, the Air Force never even fielded them, while just a single Navy plane carried them, the F-14 Tomcat. That fighter almost never used these missiles in combat, and perhaps never successfully (the few launched over Iraq apparently missing their targets), before their retirement as the more modest Sidewinder and Sparrow (and the much later AMRAAM) proved the real instruments of U.S. air superiority.
The same went on the Soviet side. Their aspirations toward a B-70 equivalent of their own, in the T-4 program, likewise amounted to little. More did come of their fighter programs, in the form of the near Mach-3 MiG-25 and MiG-31 interceptors--but these were arguably a detour from the main line of fighter development, as attested by the small numbers produced compared with other, contemporaneous models. (The Soviet Union built over 10,000 MiG-21s, and some 6,000 MiG-23s and MiG-27s--but only a little over 1,000 MiG-25s. Later the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation would build over 1,600 MiG-29s, and counting all variants, a similar number of Sukhoi-27s, but just 500 MiG-31s.)
Considering the visions of versatile, near-space-flying hypersonic combat aircraft (a different technical problem from the hypersonic missiles getting so much press now), and the other wild-seeming possibilities so prominent in talk about sixth generation fighters, I wonder if a half century later those speculating about these matters are not equally far off the mark--and never even suspecting it because they are more ignorant of the history than they realize.
It seemed natural that planes would continue to become faster and higher-flying--the more so for the even more dramatic progress in the field of rocketry. The World War II-era V-2s led to rockets that could reach escape speed (twenty-five thousand miles per hour) to leave the atmosphere entirely in the same time frame, putting into orbit unmanned satellites, cosmonauts, and beyond that, who knew? Meanwhile, those rockets' smaller cousins revolutionized the field of air defense--surface-to-air missiles meaning in the view of many that planes would have to become faster and higher-flying to escape them. Scarcely after their production run had begun the B-52 Stratofortress no longer appeared stratospheric enough in the eyes of U.S. Air Force planners, the coming years apparently demanding planes that could fly at Mach 3 at 70,000 feet or higher--and in turn, interceptor aircraft that could match that performance, for when Soviet bombers became equally capable. Thus the B-70 Valkyrie, and the F-12 and F-108 fighters.
Of course, none of these projects amounted to all that much, and nothing comparable was ever set up in their place. Instead of the B-70, canceled after the expenditure of over ten billion dollars in today's terms (which works out to about five billion per prototype), what the Air Force got was the modestly supersonic B-1, and the subsonic B-2, the emphasis placed on sneaking under radar, and then hiding from it in plain sight with the help of stealthy shaping and material, rather than somehow trying to get beyond its reach.
The F-108 never even made it to the prototype stage, while the spectacularly expensive F-12 (for the cost of one of which the Air Force could purchase a half dozen Phantoms) was also cancelled. Only the latter had much of a legacy, in the form of a small fleet of spy planes based on its airframe, the SR-71 (32 jets total), while the fighters of the third, fourth, fifth generations were pretty much the same as those of the '50s-era second generation with regard to speed and altitude.
This was even the case with those planes' intended missile, the AIM-47. It did pave the way for the AIM-54 Phoenix, but that, too, appears underwhelming in hindsight. Because the TFX fighter program supposed to use it also came to naught, the Air Force never even fielded them, while just a single Navy plane carried them, the F-14 Tomcat. That fighter almost never used these missiles in combat, and perhaps never successfully (the few launched over Iraq apparently missing their targets), before their retirement as the more modest Sidewinder and Sparrow (and the much later AMRAAM) proved the real instruments of U.S. air superiority.
The same went on the Soviet side. Their aspirations toward a B-70 equivalent of their own, in the T-4 program, likewise amounted to little. More did come of their fighter programs, in the form of the near Mach-3 MiG-25 and MiG-31 interceptors--but these were arguably a detour from the main line of fighter development, as attested by the small numbers produced compared with other, contemporaneous models. (The Soviet Union built over 10,000 MiG-21s, and some 6,000 MiG-23s and MiG-27s--but only a little over 1,000 MiG-25s. Later the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation would build over 1,600 MiG-29s, and counting all variants, a similar number of Sukhoi-27s, but just 500 MiG-31s.)
Considering the visions of versatile, near-space-flying hypersonic combat aircraft (a different technical problem from the hypersonic missiles getting so much press now), and the other wild-seeming possibilities so prominent in talk about sixth generation fighters, I wonder if a half century later those speculating about these matters are not equally far off the mark--and never even suspecting it because they are more ignorant of the history than they realize.
Has the Real Cost of Fighter Planes Risen Over Time?
The question I just asked may seem rhetorical, since, for all the sniveling of that species of political hack that calls itself "economist," virtually all those living today have never known any but an inflationary era. And even compared with the general upward trend of prices (in contrast with, for example, the stagnation of wages for a half century now), the rising cost of major weapons systems like fighter aircraft is, like the rising cost of higher education or health care, beyond notorious--not least to those expert in such matters.
Still, broad impressions are one thing, specific information another, much rarer thing, and it is the latter that concerns me here--actually checking what we all "know," or think we know.
That requires me, of course, to come by actual cost estimates, on the basis of which one might properly make such judgments.
Just like everything else, this is easier said than done.
Much easier.
Given the tendency to multiple versions of a single aircraft type, which can be expected to have different features (are we talking the A or the J here?); the changes in the cost of even the exact same version during its life cycle (as we go from early projections to actual realities, where costs are amortized and production processes get more efficient but orders also get cut back, along with everything else that can affect industrial life); and the multiplicity of ways to go about the accounting (are we speaking of the production cost of single aircraft, or the overall program cost?); one easily finds multiple price estimates for the same plane.
Moreover, those presenting these estimates do not always give the source of the figure they are citing, let alone when and how it was arrived at, and I have found few attempts at either a comprehensive listing of estimates for single aircraft, or a sophisticated averaging out of costs for a type.
This is all headache enough when one is talking about current aircraft, as we see with the F-35--which, this past December, we were told would cost both $89 million, or $300 million, per unit. It is worse when we are looking for data on older aircraft which have gone through more years and more models in production. (Only four F-35 variants have been produced to date; but according to the Wikipedia page dedicated to just listing them, no fewer than fifty-one F-4 variants have actually been produced.) There is the problem of adjusting old figures for inflation--adjusting what may well be a "rough" estimate with another rough estimate.
And of course, as the whole point of this particular exercise is a comparison among aircraft, the difficulty of establishing whether two similar-looking planes are really comparable. (Whether a fighter is meant to take off from and land on carriers, for instance, can really complicate the issue, given the special engineering they require.)
Still, one can hardly avoid the exercise; and even a rough estimate may yield insight if a trend is pronounced enough.
For the sake of keeping things as simple as possible I stuck with U.S. Air Force jet fighters that went into wide enough production to be considered the standard type of their period, and a listing which afforded rare attention to differences among models of the same plane.
Turning to figures from Richard Knaack's Encyclopedia of USAF Aircraft and Missile Systems, however, one does see quite a number of figures for, among other things, fighter jets from the 1940s to the 1970s, nicely covering the first three generations of the system at least. Given his cost estimates for early production types, the first Air Force production jet, the P-80, ran a little over $1.5 million per unit in 2019 dollars; the more advanced but still first generation F-86A, around $1.9 million.
The Air Force did produce a more advanced F-86 with a radar and afterburning engine, the D model, but such features arguably make it already a second generation aircraft. This ran $4 million a unit.
As this indicates generational boundaries can be tricky, with a comparison of the F-104 and F-4 fighters clarifying the issue. The two are thought second and third-generation respectively, but both are Mach-2 capable, radar-equipped, missile-armed fighters that flew just a couple of years apart (the first F-104 flight 1956, the first F-4 flight 1958). The most obvious difference between one and the other, in fact, is the F-4's being a bigger, heavier, twin-engined plane bearing a heavier armament--so that a case can be made for thinking of the two as generationally comparable "light" and "heavy" fighters (like the F-16 and F-15 were in their original versions). As it happens, the prices of the systems reflected this proximity--the F-104G running $12 million, the early third-generation F-4 $16 million in its C version and $20 million in its E version.
I had to turn to other sources for later aircraft. However, the fourth-generation F-15 (the prices of classes A through D varying surprisingly little) is commonly estimated to cost something in the range of $45 million per aircraft. The F-22 is similarly estimated to run $200-$300 million in today's terms--roughly what the F-35, despite its lower performance, delayed appearance and far larger planned production run (a possible 4,000 units), may also cost.
The result is that a single F-22 cost a hundred or more times what a first generation jet did; ten or more times what a second/third generation jet did; four or more times what a fourth generation jet did.
In short, a generational jump went along with at least a doubling of prices--and sometimes much more than a doubling. Using the 1945 price of the P-80 and the 1998 price of the F-22 as benchmarks, it seems that the inflation-adjusted price of the latest fighter aircraft rose 10 percent a year. This is a doubling time of every seven years or so.
Looking back the most rapid period of price increase would seem to have been the two decades or so after the first jets appeared, when their evolution was most dynamic--going from subsonic planes with optically aimed guns to supersonic aircraft firing pulse Doppler radar-guided missiles beyond visual range. However, as the price gap between even the most advanced F-4 derivative and the F-22 or F-35 demonstrates, major leaps remained in store, so much so that along with the diminished intensity of procurement the end of the Cold War brought, the F-22 remained the most advanced jet in the world, while never even really replacing the fourth generation, the F-15s and F-16s not only still the U.S. Air Force's mainstay a near half century after their own first flights (1972 and 1974, respectively), but expected to continue in frontline service for decades more.
Moreover, while it may seem that the trend ran its course by the turn of the century, the widespread interest in a sixth generation fighter suggests that we will eventually be seeing cost estimates. If past experience is anything to go by, I would consider a half billion dollar plane each surprisingly cheap, an individual price tag of a billion or more (maybe much more) strongly probable.
All too predictably, however, none of those chattering about these aircraft seem to be talking about that bill . . .
Still, broad impressions are one thing, specific information another, much rarer thing, and it is the latter that concerns me here--actually checking what we all "know," or think we know.
That requires me, of course, to come by actual cost estimates, on the basis of which one might properly make such judgments.
Just like everything else, this is easier said than done.
Much easier.
Given the tendency to multiple versions of a single aircraft type, which can be expected to have different features (are we talking the A or the J here?); the changes in the cost of even the exact same version during its life cycle (as we go from early projections to actual realities, where costs are amortized and production processes get more efficient but orders also get cut back, along with everything else that can affect industrial life); and the multiplicity of ways to go about the accounting (are we speaking of the production cost of single aircraft, or the overall program cost?); one easily finds multiple price estimates for the same plane.
Moreover, those presenting these estimates do not always give the source of the figure they are citing, let alone when and how it was arrived at, and I have found few attempts at either a comprehensive listing of estimates for single aircraft, or a sophisticated averaging out of costs for a type.
This is all headache enough when one is talking about current aircraft, as we see with the F-35--which, this past December, we were told would cost both $89 million, or $300 million, per unit. It is worse when we are looking for data on older aircraft which have gone through more years and more models in production. (Only four F-35 variants have been produced to date; but according to the Wikipedia page dedicated to just listing them, no fewer than fifty-one F-4 variants have actually been produced.) There is the problem of adjusting old figures for inflation--adjusting what may well be a "rough" estimate with another rough estimate.
And of course, as the whole point of this particular exercise is a comparison among aircraft, the difficulty of establishing whether two similar-looking planes are really comparable. (Whether a fighter is meant to take off from and land on carriers, for instance, can really complicate the issue, given the special engineering they require.)
Still, one can hardly avoid the exercise; and even a rough estimate may yield insight if a trend is pronounced enough.
For the sake of keeping things as simple as possible I stuck with U.S. Air Force jet fighters that went into wide enough production to be considered the standard type of their period, and a listing which afforded rare attention to differences among models of the same plane.
Turning to figures from Richard Knaack's Encyclopedia of USAF Aircraft and Missile Systems, however, one does see quite a number of figures for, among other things, fighter jets from the 1940s to the 1970s, nicely covering the first three generations of the system at least. Given his cost estimates for early production types, the first Air Force production jet, the P-80, ran a little over $1.5 million per unit in 2019 dollars; the more advanced but still first generation F-86A, around $1.9 million.
The Air Force did produce a more advanced F-86 with a radar and afterburning engine, the D model, but such features arguably make it already a second generation aircraft. This ran $4 million a unit.
As this indicates generational boundaries can be tricky, with a comparison of the F-104 and F-4 fighters clarifying the issue. The two are thought second and third-generation respectively, but both are Mach-2 capable, radar-equipped, missile-armed fighters that flew just a couple of years apart (the first F-104 flight 1956, the first F-4 flight 1958). The most obvious difference between one and the other, in fact, is the F-4's being a bigger, heavier, twin-engined plane bearing a heavier armament--so that a case can be made for thinking of the two as generationally comparable "light" and "heavy" fighters (like the F-16 and F-15 were in their original versions). As it happens, the prices of the systems reflected this proximity--the F-104G running $12 million, the early third-generation F-4 $16 million in its C version and $20 million in its E version.
I had to turn to other sources for later aircraft. However, the fourth-generation F-15 (the prices of classes A through D varying surprisingly little) is commonly estimated to cost something in the range of $45 million per aircraft. The F-22 is similarly estimated to run $200-$300 million in today's terms--roughly what the F-35, despite its lower performance, delayed appearance and far larger planned production run (a possible 4,000 units), may also cost.
The result is that a single F-22 cost a hundred or more times what a first generation jet did; ten or more times what a second/third generation jet did; four or more times what a fourth generation jet did.
In short, a generational jump went along with at least a doubling of prices--and sometimes much more than a doubling. Using the 1945 price of the P-80 and the 1998 price of the F-22 as benchmarks, it seems that the inflation-adjusted price of the latest fighter aircraft rose 10 percent a year. This is a doubling time of every seven years or so.
Looking back the most rapid period of price increase would seem to have been the two decades or so after the first jets appeared, when their evolution was most dynamic--going from subsonic planes with optically aimed guns to supersonic aircraft firing pulse Doppler radar-guided missiles beyond visual range. However, as the price gap between even the most advanced F-4 derivative and the F-22 or F-35 demonstrates, major leaps remained in store, so much so that along with the diminished intensity of procurement the end of the Cold War brought, the F-22 remained the most advanced jet in the world, while never even really replacing the fourth generation, the F-15s and F-16s not only still the U.S. Air Force's mainstay a near half century after their own first flights (1972 and 1974, respectively), but expected to continue in frontline service for decades more.
Moreover, while it may seem that the trend ran its course by the turn of the century, the widespread interest in a sixth generation fighter suggests that we will eventually be seeing cost estimates. If past experience is anything to go by, I would consider a half billion dollar plane each surprisingly cheap, an individual price tag of a billion or more (maybe much more) strongly probable.
All too predictably, however, none of those chattering about these aircraft seem to be talking about that bill . . .
Friday, June 28, 2019
A 100 Percent Renewable Energy-Based Electric Grid?
A recent estimate for the cost of a 100 percent renewable elecric grid by 2030 is $4.5 trillion according to a Wood Mackenzie analysis recently cited in Greentech Media.
Some will react with sticker shock.
But I suspect that is because they do not put the figure into its proper context. Large a sum as $4.5 trillion is, it is equal to about 2 percent of GDP or so over a decade, even assuming the stagnation seen this past decade continues--hardly a devastating price tag for such an essential piece of infrastructure. (Given the strong probability of technological improvement amid such an effort, and the economic stimulus it may generate, it might come to rather less.) And in any event, much or all of this money would have been spent anyway. (Infrastructure costs, and America's grid, rebuilding which is going to be a multi-trillion dollar job regardless of the specific technologies used, has been long neglected.)
In fact, it may be just half what we will spend on fossil fuel subsidies over the same time frame, if current practice continues (this being as much as $1 trillion a year). It is considerably less than the estimates of what the current round of wars (readable as at least to some extent an oil subsidy) has cost us (some $6 trillion to date).
The project (a modest thing next to all the World War II talk to which some tend when discussing the issue) is unavoidable--and as these other uses to which even greater sums have been and still are being put show (along with a good deal of other analysis), the money is there--making the course the obvious one of getting seriously to work on it, the sooner the better.
Some will react with sticker shock.
But I suspect that is because they do not put the figure into its proper context. Large a sum as $4.5 trillion is, it is equal to about 2 percent of GDP or so over a decade, even assuming the stagnation seen this past decade continues--hardly a devastating price tag for such an essential piece of infrastructure. (Given the strong probability of technological improvement amid such an effort, and the economic stimulus it may generate, it might come to rather less.) And in any event, much or all of this money would have been spent anyway. (Infrastructure costs, and America's grid, rebuilding which is going to be a multi-trillion dollar job regardless of the specific technologies used, has been long neglected.)
In fact, it may be just half what we will spend on fossil fuel subsidies over the same time frame, if current practice continues (this being as much as $1 trillion a year). It is considerably less than the estimates of what the current round of wars (readable as at least to some extent an oil subsidy) has cost us (some $6 trillion to date).
The project (a modest thing next to all the World War II talk to which some tend when discussing the issue) is unavoidable--and as these other uses to which even greater sums have been and still are being put show (along with a good deal of other analysis), the money is there--making the course the obvious one of getting seriously to work on it, the sooner the better.
Assessing Iran's Air Defense Capability
Recently I discussed the possibility some have raised of what it would take to occupy Iran--or for that matter, fight a ground war with it. The requisite numbers, along with the country's geographical position (any approach to Iran would be far different from an invasion of Iraq from the south) makes a major ground clash appear comparatively implausible.
What does seem more plausible--as highlighted by Iran's downing of a Global Hawk drone last week--is a conflict fought in the air, which has raised the question of the capabilities of Iran's air defenses.
According to most counts, Iran has a couple of hundred fighters, five hundred or so surface-to-air missile launchers, and seventeen hundred anti-aircraft guns. It might be noted that the Iranian systems today are in the main older aircraft--F-4s, F-5s, and MiG-21 variants comprising over half the fleet, with the most advanced of them just some thirty or so export versions of early model MiG-29s (while the country may dispose of another forty or so early model F-14s). And while Iran's purchases of S-300 SAMs from Russia get all the press, the great bulk of its SAM force consists of older and mostly much less capable Hawks, SA-2s and Crotales. The guns are similarly old models (Soviet-made 23 mm, 37 mm, 57 mm and 85 mm cannon).
By contrast in 1991 Iraq had three hundred fighter planes, seven hundred SAM launchers and four thousand guns--more systems, covering a country just a third Iran's size, and of roughly the same types, many already obsolescent or obsolete then, but not so much as they would be a whole three decades later in comparison with America's state-of-the-art. (There were no F-22s or F-35s, no B-1s or B-2s, to say the least of the matter.)
The result was that, if far from a cutting edge force, Iraq's air defense system still utilized a far larger collection of systems, by the standard of the time more technically advanced and deployed rather more densely than is the case with Iran. Moreover, questions unavoidably hang over the serviceability of the still very substantial American and British-made component of these forces (in spite of claims that Iran has been able to keep them operational on the basis of third-party purchases and its indigenous manufacturing resources)--while the fact that, for all the difficulties they pose, Iran keeps them in service bespeaks its limited ability to get large numbers of more modern, more convenient replacements.
Of course, attentiveness to the guns and missile launchers only takes one so far. There is the question of the radar coverage of the country, the command and control systems, the training of crews, the serviceability of all that equipment and its robustness in the face of electronic or cyber-attack--more abstruse matters lending themselves less well to sound bites and tidy quantification and neat tables for side by side comparisons. By and large armed forces tend to skimp on such essentials in favors of the flashy systems, the more so in as they are cash-strapped or developing--and certainly Iran's forces appear to have been in poor condition in these respects just a decade ago.
In short, Iran's capabilities on this score appear less than formidable.
Still, this assessment does not include the possible supplementary role of indigenous Iranian systems. Often not mentioned at all in comprehensive assessments (consult, for example, a recent edition of the International Institute of Strategic Studies' Military Balance), they got more attention after the report that the missile that downed an American Global Hawk this June was one of its domestically produced models. I have not found much in the way of comprehensive overviews of the types and numbers of these weapons--with the principal exception the Wikipedia page devoted to Iran's Air Defense Force.
When I checked the page in question (on June 27 of this year) it reported that Iran has deployed over a thousand such long-range surface-to-air missile launchers (100 km range or more), citing over four hundred Sayyad-1s; more than a hundred and fifty Sayyad-2 and Sayyad-3 systems; over four hundred locally upgraded S-200s (in contrast with the handful of examples it was supposed to have); and over a dozen Bavar-373 missile batteries which Iran claims have successfully shot down ballistic missiles in tests. Supplementing them in this listing are some five hundred medium-range SAM launchers, of the Raad (150+), Mersad (300+) and Kamin-2 (?) types, and a roughly equal number of short-range types (some two hundred-plus Ya Zahara-3 and Herz-9 missile launchers).
Amounting to some two thousand more launchers in all, this multiplies the number of launchers fivefold, and the number of long-range launchers perhaps twenty-five-fold (such that a few more or less S-300s seem nearly trivial).
Meanwhile, many credit Iran with having made significant progress in improving the deeper functioning of its air defense system in the past several years. At least one assessment from the Washington Institute claims "significant" progress there since 2011, stressing, besides the number of weapons, a comprehensive system of sectoral command centers subordinate to a national center enjoying a "comprehensive threat picture" enabling it to exercise effective control over the whole. Additionally the oft-noted variety of Iranian radar systems, while a "maintenance nightmare" means "any opponent must find a solution for facing multiple radars at once," complicating the defense suppression efforts so key to avoiding U.S. combat losses in past wars, and includes some reputedly high-quality Russian and Chinese systems (such as over-the-horizon radars which may have significant capability against currently cutting edge stealth aircraft).
All of this would potentially be game-changing, making Iranian air defenses much, much tougher than the more restricted listings suggest. However, the Wikipedia article does not provide sources for its grandiose claims--and for that matter, neither does the Washington Institute piece, which is, to be frank, fairly superficial. (It offers some discussion of the structure of Iran's air defense establishment and makes reference to recent exercises--but offers no real clue as to how well all this would work, let alone concrete support for such claims on the basis of those exercises. And the Institute is, of course, a right-wing think tank selling a hawkish line on "the Iranian threat," making vagueness the more suspect.)
Moreover, there is ample reason for skepticism. Many writers seem incapable of telling the difference between a launcher and a battery. (Iran imported 32 S-300 launchers; one item I saw from a relatively reputable think tank claimed it was 32 batteries, a very different thing, with an S-300 battery having up to eight launchers.) This seems all the more problematic given that Western analysts have, with some plausibility, long argued for Iranian claims on behalf of their advanced indigenous weaponry consistently proving shabby hoaxes on close examination. Even assuming that Iran has deployed large numbers of such SAMs, their quality is, as a practical matter, unknown for lack of prior combat use. (A single downing of an unmanned, non-stealth aircraft in unclear circumstances does not necessarily reveal very much about even the system in question, let alone the broader gamut of them.) And of course, the assessment of command and control capabilities and the like is a subtler matter still.
The upshot of this is that there seems wide room for argument. The most well-grounded claims give the impression that Iran would not be much better able than other states the U.S. has faced in recent decades (Iraq, Yugoslavia, Libya) to counter American air power--with the result that even a large-scale, prolonged campaign may see few or even no losses of manned U.S. combat aircraft to enemy action, especially if it concentrates on strategic and fixed targets rather than forces in the field (where low-altitude operations would entail increased vulnerability to ground fire). However, if one takes seriously the claims made for Iran's deployment of massive numbers of advanced, medium- and long-range SAMs; and considerable upgrading of the system tying them together into a coherent defense of its aerospace; Iran's systems may pose a challenge such as the U.S. has not seen since at least the Vietnam era. Even that, however, appears slight next to the bigger danger of a wider conflict--which, even as the news buzzes with headlines about war with Iran at the very same time that it buzzes about Russian troops in Syria, Russo-American competition over Turkey, and cyber-war against Russia's electrical grid, astonishingly few seem to acknowledge as part of the picture.
What does seem more plausible--as highlighted by Iran's downing of a Global Hawk drone last week--is a conflict fought in the air, which has raised the question of the capabilities of Iran's air defenses.
According to most counts, Iran has a couple of hundred fighters, five hundred or so surface-to-air missile launchers, and seventeen hundred anti-aircraft guns. It might be noted that the Iranian systems today are in the main older aircraft--F-4s, F-5s, and MiG-21 variants comprising over half the fleet, with the most advanced of them just some thirty or so export versions of early model MiG-29s (while the country may dispose of another forty or so early model F-14s). And while Iran's purchases of S-300 SAMs from Russia get all the press, the great bulk of its SAM force consists of older and mostly much less capable Hawks, SA-2s and Crotales. The guns are similarly old models (Soviet-made 23 mm, 37 mm, 57 mm and 85 mm cannon).
By contrast in 1991 Iraq had three hundred fighter planes, seven hundred SAM launchers and four thousand guns--more systems, covering a country just a third Iran's size, and of roughly the same types, many already obsolescent or obsolete then, but not so much as they would be a whole three decades later in comparison with America's state-of-the-art. (There were no F-22s or F-35s, no B-1s or B-2s, to say the least of the matter.)
The result was that, if far from a cutting edge force, Iraq's air defense system still utilized a far larger collection of systems, by the standard of the time more technically advanced and deployed rather more densely than is the case with Iran. Moreover, questions unavoidably hang over the serviceability of the still very substantial American and British-made component of these forces (in spite of claims that Iran has been able to keep them operational on the basis of third-party purchases and its indigenous manufacturing resources)--while the fact that, for all the difficulties they pose, Iran keeps them in service bespeaks its limited ability to get large numbers of more modern, more convenient replacements.
Of course, attentiveness to the guns and missile launchers only takes one so far. There is the question of the radar coverage of the country, the command and control systems, the training of crews, the serviceability of all that equipment and its robustness in the face of electronic or cyber-attack--more abstruse matters lending themselves less well to sound bites and tidy quantification and neat tables for side by side comparisons. By and large armed forces tend to skimp on such essentials in favors of the flashy systems, the more so in as they are cash-strapped or developing--and certainly Iran's forces appear to have been in poor condition in these respects just a decade ago.
In short, Iran's capabilities on this score appear less than formidable.
Still, this assessment does not include the possible supplementary role of indigenous Iranian systems. Often not mentioned at all in comprehensive assessments (consult, for example, a recent edition of the International Institute of Strategic Studies' Military Balance), they got more attention after the report that the missile that downed an American Global Hawk this June was one of its domestically produced models. I have not found much in the way of comprehensive overviews of the types and numbers of these weapons--with the principal exception the Wikipedia page devoted to Iran's Air Defense Force.
When I checked the page in question (on June 27 of this year) it reported that Iran has deployed over a thousand such long-range surface-to-air missile launchers (100 km range or more), citing over four hundred Sayyad-1s; more than a hundred and fifty Sayyad-2 and Sayyad-3 systems; over four hundred locally upgraded S-200s (in contrast with the handful of examples it was supposed to have); and over a dozen Bavar-373 missile batteries which Iran claims have successfully shot down ballistic missiles in tests. Supplementing them in this listing are some five hundred medium-range SAM launchers, of the Raad (150+), Mersad (300+) and Kamin-2 (?) types, and a roughly equal number of short-range types (some two hundred-plus Ya Zahara-3 and Herz-9 missile launchers).
Amounting to some two thousand more launchers in all, this multiplies the number of launchers fivefold, and the number of long-range launchers perhaps twenty-five-fold (such that a few more or less S-300s seem nearly trivial).
Meanwhile, many credit Iran with having made significant progress in improving the deeper functioning of its air defense system in the past several years. At least one assessment from the Washington Institute claims "significant" progress there since 2011, stressing, besides the number of weapons, a comprehensive system of sectoral command centers subordinate to a national center enjoying a "comprehensive threat picture" enabling it to exercise effective control over the whole. Additionally the oft-noted variety of Iranian radar systems, while a "maintenance nightmare" means "any opponent must find a solution for facing multiple radars at once," complicating the defense suppression efforts so key to avoiding U.S. combat losses in past wars, and includes some reputedly high-quality Russian and Chinese systems (such as over-the-horizon radars which may have significant capability against currently cutting edge stealth aircraft).
All of this would potentially be game-changing, making Iranian air defenses much, much tougher than the more restricted listings suggest. However, the Wikipedia article does not provide sources for its grandiose claims--and for that matter, neither does the Washington Institute piece, which is, to be frank, fairly superficial. (It offers some discussion of the structure of Iran's air defense establishment and makes reference to recent exercises--but offers no real clue as to how well all this would work, let alone concrete support for such claims on the basis of those exercises. And the Institute is, of course, a right-wing think tank selling a hawkish line on "the Iranian threat," making vagueness the more suspect.)
Moreover, there is ample reason for skepticism. Many writers seem incapable of telling the difference between a launcher and a battery. (Iran imported 32 S-300 launchers; one item I saw from a relatively reputable think tank claimed it was 32 batteries, a very different thing, with an S-300 battery having up to eight launchers.) This seems all the more problematic given that Western analysts have, with some plausibility, long argued for Iranian claims on behalf of their advanced indigenous weaponry consistently proving shabby hoaxes on close examination. Even assuming that Iran has deployed large numbers of such SAMs, their quality is, as a practical matter, unknown for lack of prior combat use. (A single downing of an unmanned, non-stealth aircraft in unclear circumstances does not necessarily reveal very much about even the system in question, let alone the broader gamut of them.) And of course, the assessment of command and control capabilities and the like is a subtler matter still.
The upshot of this is that there seems wide room for argument. The most well-grounded claims give the impression that Iran would not be much better able than other states the U.S. has faced in recent decades (Iraq, Yugoslavia, Libya) to counter American air power--with the result that even a large-scale, prolonged campaign may see few or even no losses of manned U.S. combat aircraft to enemy action, especially if it concentrates on strategic and fixed targets rather than forces in the field (where low-altitude operations would entail increased vulnerability to ground fire). However, if one takes seriously the claims made for Iran's deployment of massive numbers of advanced, medium- and long-range SAMs; and considerable upgrading of the system tying them together into a coherent defense of its aerospace; Iran's systems may pose a challenge such as the U.S. has not seen since at least the Vietnam era. Even that, however, appears slight next to the bigger danger of a wider conflict--which, even as the news buzzes with headlines about war with Iran at the very same time that it buzzes about Russian troops in Syria, Russo-American competition over Turkey, and cyber-war against Russia's electrical grid, astonishingly few seem to acknowledge as part of the picture.
An Occupation of Iran? Crunching the Numbers
Amid the Trump administration's tearing up of the 2015 deal the U.S. made with Iran regarding its nuclear program, the escalation of tensions in the region, the dispatch of substantial U.S. forces to its region, and the recent downing of a U.S. drone which, it is reported, led to the order of a retaliatory air strike rescinded mere minutes before it went through, there has been more than the usual consideration of full-blown war between the two countries--with one possible U.S. objective being the regime change in Iran long coveted by the neoconservatives, who have been in the ascendant again in Washington.
All of this, of course, evoked the memory of the attempt to do so in Iraq in 2003, which saw a highly successful conventional campaign--and disastrous aftermath. Rather than the brisk, easy transition from the Baathist regime to a more congenial successor, what resulted was a complex of wars that, in their metastasizing into the war with the ISIS organization, spilled across Iraqi borders in catastrophic fashion (and in Syria led the U.S. to perhaps its most dangerous confrontation with Russia in over a half century). And that memory has, in turn, raised the question of what would be required for an occupation of Iran were the administration to carry its action that far.
One approach to the problem has been to extrapolate from the requirements of the occupation of Iraq to those that similar action against Iran might require. One estimate espoused by then-Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki was that hundreds of thousands--perhaps 800,000 troops--would be needed for occupation duty. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld insisted that a force a fraction that size (100,000) would be sufficient. As events quickly and predictably showed, they were not, and one could (conservatively but not unreasonably) take that 800,000 figure as a baseline.
Iran has over three times' Iraq's population (82 million to the 25 million or so Iraq had then), and almost four times' its territory (636,000 square miles to Iraq's 169,000), one could plausibly picture three to four times' the number of troops being necessary. On this basis scholar of Middle Eastern history Juan Cole tripled the 800,000 figure for 2.4 million in his own analysis, but one could just as easily speak of 2-3 million.
The need for up to 3 million troops to occupy Iran may, even in light of the Iraqi precedent, seem unduly pessimistic. After all, 3 million troops was what the U.S. had in Europe on V-E Day, and just over half those (1.6 million) in Germany, and even that figure dropped rapidly afterward.
And surely occupying Iran is a smaller job than occupying Germany?
The reality, however, is that Iran is a quarter more populous than Germany was in 1945, over four times as big as Germany was in area. Indeed, it is an eighth larger than Germany, the Benelux countries, Austria, France and Italy combined (a collective 560,000 square miles or so).
It should also not be forgotten that that occupation was a joint effort with the other Allies, not least Britain, France and the Soviet Union, with smaller areas assigned other nations like Belgium, Norway and Poland, the commitment discussed here a mere fraction of what was required. Where American occupation of Germany specifically is concerned, it should be remembered that the U.S. zone in western Germany amounted to a rough quarter of Germany, some 33,000 square miles and 16 million people--a twentieth of the territory and a fifth of the population of Iran today--and at the time this demanded some three hundred thousand troops a year after the end of the war.
Worth considering, too, is the occupation of post-war Japan the U.S. carried out more single-handedly, with nearly a half million troops at the outset when the Ryukus are included.
Iran is more than four times as large as Japan (636,000 to 145,000 square miles); and its population substantially larger than Japan's was at the time (81 million to 70 million or so).
The reader should also note that Iran is substantially more urbanized than Western Europe or Japan was at the time (nearly three-quarters of its people living in cities, compared with a third or so of Japan's in that period)--a fact which makes territorial occupation more rather than less manpower-intensive. One may point out, too, that in contrast with the situation in a Europe firmly under Allied control in 1945, or insular Japan, Iran has very long, very mountainous borders with populations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan which might view the highly likely emergence of violent opposition to a U.S. occupation with sympathy. This would enlarge the problem of controlling the country, and perhaps, lead U.S. operations to extend beyond it in the event of trouble (just as the attempt to occupy Afghanistan drew the U.S. into involvement in Pakistan).
Also significant is the fact that armies have changed, especially high-tech mechanized armies like those of the U.S., whose proportion of "tail" to "tooth" has risen enormously. In the World War II period some 65 percent of troops were combat personnel, but the figure was down to a quarter by the early twentieth century. One could argue for an even sharper drop in the "foxhole strength" a large unit could muster--troops who would be available to, for instance, patrol on the street rather than keep the gear running, or the flow of supplies continuing to come in. This raises the necessary ratio of troops-to-occupied yet again.
Given these precedents with regard to territory, population, urbanization and borders, and the tasking of any given quantity of military manpower in the current high-tech, high-tail era, a total figure comparable to the U.S. force in Western Europe, or a multiple of the force inserted into Japan, does not seem at all outside the bounds of the plausible.
Of course, this is far beyond the capacity of American forces as presently constituted. Consider the active-duty U.S. armed forces. These come to some 1.3 million personnel. However, half of that is Air Force and Navy--and the other half Army and Marines. Moreover, of the 660,000 or so Army and Marines (480,000 Army, 180,000 Marines) not all are ground troops trained, armed and organized into usable formations.
The two services have some 13 divisions between them--on average, 15,000 troops each. This comes to about 200,000 troops that could actually be put on the ground--a third of the 660,000 figure, and the rest a vast organization for recruitment, training, administration and support in logistical and other ways required to keep those 200,000 in the field, especially in a faraway country. Additionally, it would be out of the question for the entire force to be deployed to one contingency, at once. The U.S. has military commitments all over the world; and in any event, units are rotated in and out of operational duty. (They need rest; they need retraining and reconstitution.) This is the case even in world wars. As a result, rather less than the whole would be available for a given task.
Of course, there are reserves. The Army and Marine Reserves together have some 240,000 personnel (200,000 Army, 40,000 Marines), while the Army National Guard can supply 340,000 more. However, one again has to think in terms of actual, usable ground units. The Army Reserve has 8 divisions, the Marine Reserve one, the Army National Guard 8 more divisions than that--a maximum of 17 divisions in all, and plausibly some 250,000 personnel, whose actual use would be subject to the same constraints as the active-duty troops.
Recent U.S. experience is telling. Even with the biggest mobilization of reservists since the Korean War swelling their ranks (150,000 National Guard and Reservists, providing up to a quarter of the force rotating through Iraq), keeping 200,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan--equaling just a quarter of nominal Army and Marine strength at the time--was a considerable strain.
The result is that even a complete mobilization of the Reserve and National Guard (a time-consuming process that will raise the political difficulty of action) gives the U.S. under a half million deployable combat troops, and to go by the Iraq precedent, just 300,000-400,000 available for all operational contingencies.
It is somewhere between a fifth and a tenth of the 2-3 million personnel figure.
Now think about what it would take to close that gap. It would not be a simple addition of 2-3 million more troops, but 2-3 million in deployable combat units. Assuming the ratios of nominal service strength and combat strength remain the same, this will mean an enlargement of the Army (the more logical locus of the expansion, given the Marines' more specialized nature as an amphibious assault/rapid reaction force) to 6 million, 8 million, or even more. It is scarcely conceivable that such a body of ground troops could be supported abroad without a commensurate expansion of the Air Force and Navy, and especially their airlift and sealift capacities, meaning millions more personnel in those forces. In the end one might imagine something like that all-services' wartime peak, 12 million under arms in all.
The U.S. population is about two-and-a-half times larger today than it was during in World War II (330 million to 130 million then). Still, raising such a force would mean a fairly comprehensive draft, as some of the more astute observers have pointed out.
Daunting as all this sounds, it still overlooks a key issue here, which is that one ordinarily has to defeat a country's armed forces before they can occupy their territory. Given recent U.S. experience--above all, with Iraq--this may seem a simple matter. Still, Iraq proved an exceptionally "convenient" opponent. It had a long border with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, permitting the U.S. and allied forces wide leeway in their approach to the country, the more so given the open desert of the south. The Iraqi armed forces had already been badly mauled in the 1991 Gulf War, and substantially denied a chance to recover by international sanctions (with its air force and air defenses further degraded by low-grade air war). When war broke out, Iraq waged a defensive conventional campaign of a kind that left its forces as vulnerable as they could conceivably be to American strengths. And of course, the 2003 conflict saw Iraq totally on its own, with Russia, China and other actors limiting themselves to political opposition.
By contrast Iran's borders afford no such convenient entry points or staging areas. With four decades to adapt since the loss of American and British sponsorship, and three decades to recover from their last major war, Iran's armed forces are in a far less battered condition--and for all their undeniable limitations with regard to equipment and other matters, far more numerous (with the regular military, Revolutionary Guard and Basij paramilitaries plausibly raising 2 million or more). Iran may be less passive than Iraq in regard to a build-up nearby, using its far less likely to fight back along the rigidly conventional terms so implausible given the undeniable disparity in military power (with the prospect of unconventional Iranian naval tactics being used to sink American warships oft-noted). And of course the country will be nowhere near so isolated--with the possibility of Russian intervention impossible to leave out of any such calculations. Indeed, a U.S. attack on Iran may be less tolerable to Moscow than regime change in Syria because of the country's bordering ex-Soviet states Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Armenia, as well as its size and energy reserves; while the logistics of Russian intervention would be easier. (Russian aircraft need only fly over the Caspian, while enjoying quite direct access to Iranian airspace through bordering states.) While a Chinese response seems far less likely to take the form of direct military intervention, the country's objections to such action are likely to count for much more in 2019 than they did in 2003.
In short, any conflict against Iran, not simply including a full-blown national occupation, but any military action whatsoever, is quite a different thing from the question of action against Iraq in 2003--which itself proved a far, far different thing from what Donald Rumsfeld and company promised.
All of this, of course, evoked the memory of the attempt to do so in Iraq in 2003, which saw a highly successful conventional campaign--and disastrous aftermath. Rather than the brisk, easy transition from the Baathist regime to a more congenial successor, what resulted was a complex of wars that, in their metastasizing into the war with the ISIS organization, spilled across Iraqi borders in catastrophic fashion (and in Syria led the U.S. to perhaps its most dangerous confrontation with Russia in over a half century). And that memory has, in turn, raised the question of what would be required for an occupation of Iran were the administration to carry its action that far.
One approach to the problem has been to extrapolate from the requirements of the occupation of Iraq to those that similar action against Iran might require. One estimate espoused by then-Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki was that hundreds of thousands--perhaps 800,000 troops--would be needed for occupation duty. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld insisted that a force a fraction that size (100,000) would be sufficient. As events quickly and predictably showed, they were not, and one could (conservatively but not unreasonably) take that 800,000 figure as a baseline.
Iran has over three times' Iraq's population (82 million to the 25 million or so Iraq had then), and almost four times' its territory (636,000 square miles to Iraq's 169,000), one could plausibly picture three to four times' the number of troops being necessary. On this basis scholar of Middle Eastern history Juan Cole tripled the 800,000 figure for 2.4 million in his own analysis, but one could just as easily speak of 2-3 million.
The need for up to 3 million troops to occupy Iran may, even in light of the Iraqi precedent, seem unduly pessimistic. After all, 3 million troops was what the U.S. had in Europe on V-E Day, and just over half those (1.6 million) in Germany, and even that figure dropped rapidly afterward.
And surely occupying Iran is a smaller job than occupying Germany?
The reality, however, is that Iran is a quarter more populous than Germany was in 1945, over four times as big as Germany was in area. Indeed, it is an eighth larger than Germany, the Benelux countries, Austria, France and Italy combined (a collective 560,000 square miles or so).
It should also not be forgotten that that occupation was a joint effort with the other Allies, not least Britain, France and the Soviet Union, with smaller areas assigned other nations like Belgium, Norway and Poland, the commitment discussed here a mere fraction of what was required. Where American occupation of Germany specifically is concerned, it should be remembered that the U.S. zone in western Germany amounted to a rough quarter of Germany, some 33,000 square miles and 16 million people--a twentieth of the territory and a fifth of the population of Iran today--and at the time this demanded some three hundred thousand troops a year after the end of the war.
Worth considering, too, is the occupation of post-war Japan the U.S. carried out more single-handedly, with nearly a half million troops at the outset when the Ryukus are included.
Iran is more than four times as large as Japan (636,000 to 145,000 square miles); and its population substantially larger than Japan's was at the time (81 million to 70 million or so).
The reader should also note that Iran is substantially more urbanized than Western Europe or Japan was at the time (nearly three-quarters of its people living in cities, compared with a third or so of Japan's in that period)--a fact which makes territorial occupation more rather than less manpower-intensive. One may point out, too, that in contrast with the situation in a Europe firmly under Allied control in 1945, or insular Japan, Iran has very long, very mountainous borders with populations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan which might view the highly likely emergence of violent opposition to a U.S. occupation with sympathy. This would enlarge the problem of controlling the country, and perhaps, lead U.S. operations to extend beyond it in the event of trouble (just as the attempt to occupy Afghanistan drew the U.S. into involvement in Pakistan).
Also significant is the fact that armies have changed, especially high-tech mechanized armies like those of the U.S., whose proportion of "tail" to "tooth" has risen enormously. In the World War II period some 65 percent of troops were combat personnel, but the figure was down to a quarter by the early twentieth century. One could argue for an even sharper drop in the "foxhole strength" a large unit could muster--troops who would be available to, for instance, patrol on the street rather than keep the gear running, or the flow of supplies continuing to come in. This raises the necessary ratio of troops-to-occupied yet again.
Given these precedents with regard to territory, population, urbanization and borders, and the tasking of any given quantity of military manpower in the current high-tech, high-tail era, a total figure comparable to the U.S. force in Western Europe, or a multiple of the force inserted into Japan, does not seem at all outside the bounds of the plausible.
Of course, this is far beyond the capacity of American forces as presently constituted. Consider the active-duty U.S. armed forces. These come to some 1.3 million personnel. However, half of that is Air Force and Navy--and the other half Army and Marines. Moreover, of the 660,000 or so Army and Marines (480,000 Army, 180,000 Marines) not all are ground troops trained, armed and organized into usable formations.
The two services have some 13 divisions between them--on average, 15,000 troops each. This comes to about 200,000 troops that could actually be put on the ground--a third of the 660,000 figure, and the rest a vast organization for recruitment, training, administration and support in logistical and other ways required to keep those 200,000 in the field, especially in a faraway country. Additionally, it would be out of the question for the entire force to be deployed to one contingency, at once. The U.S. has military commitments all over the world; and in any event, units are rotated in and out of operational duty. (They need rest; they need retraining and reconstitution.) This is the case even in world wars. As a result, rather less than the whole would be available for a given task.
Of course, there are reserves. The Army and Marine Reserves together have some 240,000 personnel (200,000 Army, 40,000 Marines), while the Army National Guard can supply 340,000 more. However, one again has to think in terms of actual, usable ground units. The Army Reserve has 8 divisions, the Marine Reserve one, the Army National Guard 8 more divisions than that--a maximum of 17 divisions in all, and plausibly some 250,000 personnel, whose actual use would be subject to the same constraints as the active-duty troops.
Recent U.S. experience is telling. Even with the biggest mobilization of reservists since the Korean War swelling their ranks (150,000 National Guard and Reservists, providing up to a quarter of the force rotating through Iraq), keeping 200,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan--equaling just a quarter of nominal Army and Marine strength at the time--was a considerable strain.
The result is that even a complete mobilization of the Reserve and National Guard (a time-consuming process that will raise the political difficulty of action) gives the U.S. under a half million deployable combat troops, and to go by the Iraq precedent, just 300,000-400,000 available for all operational contingencies.
It is somewhere between a fifth and a tenth of the 2-3 million personnel figure.
Now think about what it would take to close that gap. It would not be a simple addition of 2-3 million more troops, but 2-3 million in deployable combat units. Assuming the ratios of nominal service strength and combat strength remain the same, this will mean an enlargement of the Army (the more logical locus of the expansion, given the Marines' more specialized nature as an amphibious assault/rapid reaction force) to 6 million, 8 million, or even more. It is scarcely conceivable that such a body of ground troops could be supported abroad without a commensurate expansion of the Air Force and Navy, and especially their airlift and sealift capacities, meaning millions more personnel in those forces. In the end one might imagine something like that all-services' wartime peak, 12 million under arms in all.
The U.S. population is about two-and-a-half times larger today than it was during in World War II (330 million to 130 million then). Still, raising such a force would mean a fairly comprehensive draft, as some of the more astute observers have pointed out.
Daunting as all this sounds, it still overlooks a key issue here, which is that one ordinarily has to defeat a country's armed forces before they can occupy their territory. Given recent U.S. experience--above all, with Iraq--this may seem a simple matter. Still, Iraq proved an exceptionally "convenient" opponent. It had a long border with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, permitting the U.S. and allied forces wide leeway in their approach to the country, the more so given the open desert of the south. The Iraqi armed forces had already been badly mauled in the 1991 Gulf War, and substantially denied a chance to recover by international sanctions (with its air force and air defenses further degraded by low-grade air war). When war broke out, Iraq waged a defensive conventional campaign of a kind that left its forces as vulnerable as they could conceivably be to American strengths. And of course, the 2003 conflict saw Iraq totally on its own, with Russia, China and other actors limiting themselves to political opposition.
By contrast Iran's borders afford no such convenient entry points or staging areas. With four decades to adapt since the loss of American and British sponsorship, and three decades to recover from their last major war, Iran's armed forces are in a far less battered condition--and for all their undeniable limitations with regard to equipment and other matters, far more numerous (with the regular military, Revolutionary Guard and Basij paramilitaries plausibly raising 2 million or more). Iran may be less passive than Iraq in regard to a build-up nearby, using its far less likely to fight back along the rigidly conventional terms so implausible given the undeniable disparity in military power (with the prospect of unconventional Iranian naval tactics being used to sink American warships oft-noted). And of course the country will be nowhere near so isolated--with the possibility of Russian intervention impossible to leave out of any such calculations. Indeed, a U.S. attack on Iran may be less tolerable to Moscow than regime change in Syria because of the country's bordering ex-Soviet states Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Armenia, as well as its size and energy reserves; while the logistics of Russian intervention would be easier. (Russian aircraft need only fly over the Caspian, while enjoying quite direct access to Iranian airspace through bordering states.) While a Chinese response seems far less likely to take the form of direct military intervention, the country's objections to such action are likely to count for much more in 2019 than they did in 2003.
In short, any conflict against Iran, not simply including a full-blown national occupation, but any military action whatsoever, is quite a different thing from the question of action against Iraq in 2003--which itself proved a far, far different thing from what Donald Rumsfeld and company promised.
Understanding Neoconservatism
Recently I have had occasion to think about the word "neoliberal."
Some, apparently desperate to ward off its association with the policies of the Democratic Party in recent years, have gone to the risible extreme of denying that the word has any meaning at all.
However, it is a simple enough matter to establish that the word does in fact have a distinct meaning, and that its use to describe the conduct of governments and major political parties around the world is reasonable enough. The term refers to a recognizable, distinct political ideology emergent in a particular historical moment (idolization of and calls for a return to Victorian-style classical liberalism, hence the "neo" in the 1940s, in response to the advance of socialism and social democracy in Eurasia and North America), consolidated by figures who did indeed regard themselves as participants in a movement (Friderich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, among others, were all there at Mont Pelerin in 1947). Moreover, the abstract theorizing quickly became manifest in a concrete political program (small governments with light taxes and balanced budgets and no concessions to egalitarianism like welfare states, progressive taxation, labor unions and the like), and was soon promoted by an array of organizations largely founded and funded by an interlinked network of actors including but extending beyond the figures named above, and avowing a common purpose (the economics departments of the universities of Chicago and Virginia, think tanks like the Cato Institute, publications like Reason magazine).
The historian can also trace the increasing implementation of neoliberalism's key ideas by a growing number of governments from the 1970s forward, typically in dramatic fashion and open sympathy for neoliberalism's objectives (the governments of Pinochet, Thatcher, Reagan, Yeltsin marking the turn in their respective countries). Of course, their realization of the program has to date been imperfect (no one quite realizing its ideals, welfare states enduring in reduced form, corporate welfare flourishing), but all the same, the trend is indisputable, and even in its inconsistencies and contradictions, quite recognizable.
It is much more difficult to present any such case in regard to the neoconservatism so much in the news again, even if one concentrates on only its most common usage in American political discussion, its use to refer to the advocates of intensive overseas military interventionism on the part of the United States associated with certain publications (Commentary, The National Interest, The Weekly Standard), statements of principle (like the Project for a New American Century), and figures active in political punditry (Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol, and their sons John and William, respectively) and the national security scene (Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, convicted Iran-Contra scandal figure Elliot Abrams, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton).
On close inspection, however, the grouping is rather looser, no Mont Pelerin moment identifiable. That has not stopped some from trying to work out a lineage that will help it make all sense, for instance pointing to '30s-era Marxists who became disenchanted with the ideology after Stalin, like Irving Kristol; to the teachings of philosopher Leo Strauss, whose lectures Paul Wolfowitz attended; to the tutelage of Cold Warriors like Albert Wohlstetter, or Henry Jackson, with both of whom Richard Perle has been closely associated. However, after the search for antecedents in ex-Communists-turned-fanatical-anti-Communists, obscure professors, and the rest, one does not have very much--and may realize that, really, there was far more obvious precedent for them, not least in the long, and broadly mainstream, "Wilsonian" tradition to which a good many have also pointed over the years.
In considering that one has to acknowledge that observers do so on differing grounds and in differing ways, not least because different observers emphasize different aspects of Wilsonianism (some stressing the image of Wilson as "idealist," others his forceful use of American power in support of those ideals), in part because they themselves have different attitudes to the figure.1 For my part, I think it most useful to consider the neoconservatives as simply Wilsonians of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Consider the essential attributes of Wilsonianism:
* The championing of the "liberal international order"--a global, capitalist economy founded on a (relatively) free flow of money and goods across borders; and legitimated by its identification with the ideals of self-determination, freedom, and economic efficiency and thus prosperity as understood by classical liberals and their heirs--and a leading role for the U.S. in it as its organizer and protector, following the precedent of nineteenth century Britain.
* To the end of preserving or extending that order, a preparedness to intervene militarily, on a massive scale, not just against acts of aggression by one state against another, but for the sake of "regime change" where a government's conduct has been deemed unsatisfactory--such principle trumping sovereignty and even democracy. ("I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men!" Wilson declared, and his penchant for intervention in Latin America makes it clear his declaration was sincere--and the conduct afterward, routine.)
* In line with the above, Wilsonianism tends to take the existence of alternative political ideologies as in themselves threatening, with the most obvious example a tendency to extreme anti-Communism. (While the Cold War is normally regarded as having begun in the 1940s, it is worth remembering that the U.S. was at odds with the Soviet government from the start, Wilson sending tens of thousands of U.S. troops to fight the Bolsheviks as part of the foreign intervention by the Allies after the Russian Revolution.)
* In line with the above, Wilsonianism also displays intense concern for the European and Eurasian balance of power, typically tending toward a partnership with the English-speaking nations, and Atlantic Europe more broadly, against continental states potentially capable of dominating the region. (This was seen in the U.S. joining Britain and France in their war against Germany in 1917, and subsequent preoccupation with the two principal such powers, Germany and Russia.)
Not only is each of these principles part of the neoconservative package, but I would argue that they cover all of the essentials in that package--with the differences relatively minor, matters of means rather than ends. Certainly Wilson's campaigning for the League of Nations is a far cry from the neoconservatives' raging contempt for the United Nations, and even the closest and most longstanding American allies, which neoconservatives openly display (recall Donald Rumsfeld's disdain for "Old Europe?"), and the preference for unilateralism that goes with it. There is their "obsession" with the Middle East.
However, it is worth remembering that, however sincere Wilson may have been, the League of Nations, and the concern for international community more broadly, was a means with which to realize this vision, not an end in itself--and that those of similar vision cannot but act differently in today's very different circumstances.
The same goes for the preoccupation of the neoconservatives with the Middle East. In Wilson's day the region was largely passing into the control of America's ally, Britain, and the United States not overly troubled by the fact. Britain's decline as an imperial power, and the increasing importance of the region's oil and gas production and exports (not least, for the economy of the U.S. itself), meant that the U.S. greatly stepped up its involvement there from the 1940s, and especially the 1970s, on, an involvement which interacted with but survived the end of the Cold War.
Afterward the emphases on "rogue states" and "resource security" (well-described by Michael Klare at the time) meant it remained prominent within rationales for American possession of superpower-level forces. (These were by no means the only factors, of course, but plenty by themselves to assure such a posture.)
Affecting perceptions may also be the fact that Wilson is distant enough that most of us know him and those who surrounded him from court historians equally inclined to glorifying past figures of the kind, while the news coverage of the moment, for all the media's toothlessness, means that the poison and the dirt of contemporary politics are rather harder to miss than the poison and the dirt of politics past. Making it harder to miss, too, is how singularly lacking neoconservatism has been in charismatic and inspiring advocates. (Anyone else recall Richard Perle responding to callers on C-SPAN with crude insults?)
Remembering all this helps us better understand the neoconservatives, but it also helps us better understand American foreign policy more generally. After the invasion of Iraq led to disaster and quagmire rather than the tidy institution of a liberal government in that country, the neoconservatives who had so championed the action were regarded as on the outs in the media and in Washington, even before the end of the second term of the George Bush administration, and certainly after his replacement by Barack Obama. However, there was relatively little change in American policy. Not only did the Obama administration continue to have boots on the ground in Iraq, but it pursued regime change in still more countries--Libya, Syria--with similarly disastrous result. The end of the Obama administration, its succession by that of Donald Trump, saw prominent neoconservatives like William Kristol and Max Boot win plaudits from "establishment" Democrats for their criticism of the new administration, even as some of their colleagues held positions of power and even enjoyed promotions--John Bolton becoming National Security Advisor, while Elliott Abrams became the Special Envoy to Venezuela (regime change was never just for the Middle East, after all), with the same Democrats pleading his case. In a very real sense the neoconservatives had returned to the mainstream--but it is equally true to say that they never actually left, and their departure would scarcely have been noticed if they had, because even if they were cruder about it, and arguably more reckless, in the end their ideas were well within the scope of the longtime orthodoxy of the policymaking establishment.
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Some, apparently desperate to ward off its association with the policies of the Democratic Party in recent years, have gone to the risible extreme of denying that the word has any meaning at all.
However, it is a simple enough matter to establish that the word does in fact have a distinct meaning, and that its use to describe the conduct of governments and major political parties around the world is reasonable enough. The term refers to a recognizable, distinct political ideology emergent in a particular historical moment (idolization of and calls for a return to Victorian-style classical liberalism, hence the "neo" in the 1940s, in response to the advance of socialism and social democracy in Eurasia and North America), consolidated by figures who did indeed regard themselves as participants in a movement (Friderich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, among others, were all there at Mont Pelerin in 1947). Moreover, the abstract theorizing quickly became manifest in a concrete political program (small governments with light taxes and balanced budgets and no concessions to egalitarianism like welfare states, progressive taxation, labor unions and the like), and was soon promoted by an array of organizations largely founded and funded by an interlinked network of actors including but extending beyond the figures named above, and avowing a common purpose (the economics departments of the universities of Chicago and Virginia, think tanks like the Cato Institute, publications like Reason magazine).
The historian can also trace the increasing implementation of neoliberalism's key ideas by a growing number of governments from the 1970s forward, typically in dramatic fashion and open sympathy for neoliberalism's objectives (the governments of Pinochet, Thatcher, Reagan, Yeltsin marking the turn in their respective countries). Of course, their realization of the program has to date been imperfect (no one quite realizing its ideals, welfare states enduring in reduced form, corporate welfare flourishing), but all the same, the trend is indisputable, and even in its inconsistencies and contradictions, quite recognizable.
It is much more difficult to present any such case in regard to the neoconservatism so much in the news again, even if one concentrates on only its most common usage in American political discussion, its use to refer to the advocates of intensive overseas military interventionism on the part of the United States associated with certain publications (Commentary, The National Interest, The Weekly Standard), statements of principle (like the Project for a New American Century), and figures active in political punditry (Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol, and their sons John and William, respectively) and the national security scene (Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, convicted Iran-Contra scandal figure Elliot Abrams, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton).
On close inspection, however, the grouping is rather looser, no Mont Pelerin moment identifiable. That has not stopped some from trying to work out a lineage that will help it make all sense, for instance pointing to '30s-era Marxists who became disenchanted with the ideology after Stalin, like Irving Kristol; to the teachings of philosopher Leo Strauss, whose lectures Paul Wolfowitz attended; to the tutelage of Cold Warriors like Albert Wohlstetter, or Henry Jackson, with both of whom Richard Perle has been closely associated. However, after the search for antecedents in ex-Communists-turned-fanatical-anti-Communists, obscure professors, and the rest, one does not have very much--and may realize that, really, there was far more obvious precedent for them, not least in the long, and broadly mainstream, "Wilsonian" tradition to which a good many have also pointed over the years.
In considering that one has to acknowledge that observers do so on differing grounds and in differing ways, not least because different observers emphasize different aspects of Wilsonianism (some stressing the image of Wilson as "idealist," others his forceful use of American power in support of those ideals), in part because they themselves have different attitudes to the figure.1 For my part, I think it most useful to consider the neoconservatives as simply Wilsonians of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Consider the essential attributes of Wilsonianism:
* The championing of the "liberal international order"--a global, capitalist economy founded on a (relatively) free flow of money and goods across borders; and legitimated by its identification with the ideals of self-determination, freedom, and economic efficiency and thus prosperity as understood by classical liberals and their heirs--and a leading role for the U.S. in it as its organizer and protector, following the precedent of nineteenth century Britain.
* To the end of preserving or extending that order, a preparedness to intervene militarily, on a massive scale, not just against acts of aggression by one state against another, but for the sake of "regime change" where a government's conduct has been deemed unsatisfactory--such principle trumping sovereignty and even democracy. ("I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men!" Wilson declared, and his penchant for intervention in Latin America makes it clear his declaration was sincere--and the conduct afterward, routine.)
* In line with the above, Wilsonianism tends to take the existence of alternative political ideologies as in themselves threatening, with the most obvious example a tendency to extreme anti-Communism. (While the Cold War is normally regarded as having begun in the 1940s, it is worth remembering that the U.S. was at odds with the Soviet government from the start, Wilson sending tens of thousands of U.S. troops to fight the Bolsheviks as part of the foreign intervention by the Allies after the Russian Revolution.)
* In line with the above, Wilsonianism also displays intense concern for the European and Eurasian balance of power, typically tending toward a partnership with the English-speaking nations, and Atlantic Europe more broadly, against continental states potentially capable of dominating the region. (This was seen in the U.S. joining Britain and France in their war against Germany in 1917, and subsequent preoccupation with the two principal such powers, Germany and Russia.)
Not only is each of these principles part of the neoconservative package, but I would argue that they cover all of the essentials in that package--with the differences relatively minor, matters of means rather than ends. Certainly Wilson's campaigning for the League of Nations is a far cry from the neoconservatives' raging contempt for the United Nations, and even the closest and most longstanding American allies, which neoconservatives openly display (recall Donald Rumsfeld's disdain for "Old Europe?"), and the preference for unilateralism that goes with it. There is their "obsession" with the Middle East.
However, it is worth remembering that, however sincere Wilson may have been, the League of Nations, and the concern for international community more broadly, was a means with which to realize this vision, not an end in itself--and that those of similar vision cannot but act differently in today's very different circumstances.
The same goes for the preoccupation of the neoconservatives with the Middle East. In Wilson's day the region was largely passing into the control of America's ally, Britain, and the United States not overly troubled by the fact. Britain's decline as an imperial power, and the increasing importance of the region's oil and gas production and exports (not least, for the economy of the U.S. itself), meant that the U.S. greatly stepped up its involvement there from the 1940s, and especially the 1970s, on, an involvement which interacted with but survived the end of the Cold War.
Afterward the emphases on "rogue states" and "resource security" (well-described by Michael Klare at the time) meant it remained prominent within rationales for American possession of superpower-level forces. (These were by no means the only factors, of course, but plenty by themselves to assure such a posture.)
Affecting perceptions may also be the fact that Wilson is distant enough that most of us know him and those who surrounded him from court historians equally inclined to glorifying past figures of the kind, while the news coverage of the moment, for all the media's toothlessness, means that the poison and the dirt of contemporary politics are rather harder to miss than the poison and the dirt of politics past. Making it harder to miss, too, is how singularly lacking neoconservatism has been in charismatic and inspiring advocates. (Anyone else recall Richard Perle responding to callers on C-SPAN with crude insults?)
Remembering all this helps us better understand the neoconservatives, but it also helps us better understand American foreign policy more generally. After the invasion of Iraq led to disaster and quagmire rather than the tidy institution of a liberal government in that country, the neoconservatives who had so championed the action were regarded as on the outs in the media and in Washington, even before the end of the second term of the George Bush administration, and certainly after his replacement by Barack Obama. However, there was relatively little change in American policy. Not only did the Obama administration continue to have boots on the ground in Iraq, but it pursued regime change in still more countries--Libya, Syria--with similarly disastrous result. The end of the Obama administration, its succession by that of Donald Trump, saw prominent neoconservatives like William Kristol and Max Boot win plaudits from "establishment" Democrats for their criticism of the new administration, even as some of their colleagues held positions of power and even enjoyed promotions--John Bolton becoming National Security Advisor, while Elliott Abrams became the Special Envoy to Venezuela (regime change was never just for the Middle East, after all), with the same Democrats pleading his case. In a very real sense the neoconservatives had returned to the mainstream--but it is equally true to say that they never actually left, and their departure would scarcely have been noticed if they had, because even if they were cruder about it, and arguably more reckless, in the end their ideas were well within the scope of the longtime orthodoxy of the policymaking establishment.
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